I can't seem to find any information about that you have to buy the ships to be able to fly them, only information about how everything you can buy will also be available through normal game play.
IF you want to fly them in the tech demo that's available now, indeed, you have to buy them. There's no form of progression yet to actually get them in game while playing.
So I'm a bit lost as to where you all get this impression from that you HAVE to buy it to fly it, in a very far away possible first real release.
even from their official wiki:
Is Star Citizen “free to play”? A subscription game?
To play Star Citizen you need only to buy the initial game. There will never be a monthly charge for usage. Some in-game items may be available as microtransactions, but we will NEVER sell anything that can’t be acquired through honest (and fun!) gameplay
but .. yea.. up to 18k for a package of ships to fly in a very early alpha stage. Those kind of offers shouldn't even be online and is one of the worries I have with the game. Same as for certain (read a lot) of their stretch goals during the campaign: stretch goals on another million $ for just an addition of a small flag or crappy item for example.
For the normal people, the base investment for an all access package is just the same as some other early access games we got on steam.
In the all access package was a basic Aurora ship, which will also be included in the final version as it is now. And from there you work your way up, just the same way as you started in Elite with your sidewinder.
again: if it ever comes out that is
