The concept for pay to win is not applicable in this game because there is no "win" state per say.
This is a pretty daft argument, what people mean by "pay to win" is that cash bestows advantage in game - i.e. not just cosmetics with no effect.
It's very easy to come up with a scenario where, for example, my $180 real-money LTI Super Hornet blows up your shitty civilian starter ship with my $80 insta-kill missiles and you permadie and lose all your stuff. That's not even getting to more out there scenarios like someone dropping a whole thousand-dollar Capital Ship on you. And even if I lose my ship, I have infinite more with LTI, whereas you're out of luck.
The game currently is hugely Pay to Win, and I'm not sure what's supposed to change to make it not so, as even being able to buy ships in game wouldn't change that.
Pay2win means, IMO, to pay money and everyone who doesn't stands no chance against you. In this game you can always run away for example.
The game creating a system where only free players could engage free players and have to run from paid players else, and that being considered not Pay 2 Win is insane.
Wait are we still getting modding? I had imagined since they expanded on the live service so much, total conversion mods would be the first to go.
Like VR support, modding is a thing that no one is working on, they have no plan to work on, but they haven't outright faced the community and admitted it's cancelled instead insisting it's "the very last thing we'll do", so backers are still sure that it's coming. Realistically, it's not coming, they'll struggle to do all the functionality they promised in the base game, let alone stretch goals.
EDIT: ^^ LOL, proved my point right there