in this game cosmetics give an actual advantage if you can sell ships with new cosmetics, it will give you and extra edge against the competition when selling ships therefore its not purely cosmetic - on the long run it will mean an extra gain of cash or other stuff, unless you will not be able to trade cosmetic stuff or its one time use (but also this would be p2w since you can generate quanta via the cash shop). also it will be cutting short on the creative part of the game for the sake of cashing out on players. a cash shop on top of a sub is not a good system imho, go for either option not both.
since youre basically forced to run several accounts already due to their talent system which would otherwise require more than 25 years to master all the talents, that should be enough to finance the server and production costs. if youre unable to plan with that kind of money you shouldnt run a project like this (btw NQ claimed they have done the math and came up with 6.99 was a sustainable fee)
devs should become more ethical, but in the last decade greed has taken over this industry and somehow the new generation of players have been indoctrinated and conditioned to those kind of systems...