You can get everything that's on sale inside the game. It's just a matter of time and focus.
I wouldn't say it necessarily is a pay to win style of concept. Winning presupposes there's an objective winnable criterion. I think the only thing you're winning is time and to play the game in the niche way you want without going through the common start. Of course you could buy the thousand dollar ships like the Idris, but then you have to take into account the running costs including having it staffed to operate. Those ships are supposed to be persistent as well, and won't disappear when you log out, I read.
My pledge strategy was to get a game package, which I downgraded to a 30 USD one (incl both games and a ship) at the anniversary. However, considering that insurance could be a kind of MMO pay to play fee, I decided to use the pledge difference, and go for an LTI personal all-rounder vehicle (The Avenger Titan). Furthermore, I have received free coupons over time which I have exchanged for in-game money. My final pledge, to support the developers, was to get a multi-crew ship that I think could be fun to fly with friends, that also had LTI (furthermore, alien ships may not be easily insurable in-game), which was the Merchantman. So far I'm liking what I see, and I understand the delays that partly have sprung out of the massively increased funding and scope of the game, that wasn't anticipated. It is that game that interests me, not the 20 million usd one, that, perhaps at the beginning of the kickstarter, was promised for earlier this year.
It's hard to resist the urge to buy new ships at concept sales (Sabre + Dragonfly for me, but I decided against, and set them as goals to acquire in-game instead). In one way I think the price also has to more than fund the development cost of that specific ship. With that level of detail, there are many man hours invested.
I believe you can buy the game without any ships at launch, but you would end up having to do odd jobs for others and crew their ships for some time, I guess. Not a bad thing to start from the ground up, but it depends on how much time you can and want to invest in the different aspects of the game.