Let me contribute some facts to that discussion.

You can definitely customize your abilities. Each ship has 4 different ability modules. Primary, Secondary, Perimeter and Internal Abilities - all of these serve different functions.

For each of these modules you'll have different abilities at your disposal. These abilities are most likely shared between all sub classes. So a heavy Dreadnought have the same abilities available as a light Dreadnoughts and so one.

These abilities are the bread and butter of your play style and they come in huge varieties. This may be an evasion maneuver or a temporary buff for your ship or a special missile that will apply a temporary debuff to an enemy ship or a pulse that will destroy nearby enemy missiles or a pulse that will scramble nearby ship systems or a cloak or special lasers that will shoot down heavy torpedoes or a barrage of missiles for damage or a barrage of torpedoes for even more damage or a single super heavy torpedo for incredible amounts of damage...

...it's quite a lot. Obviously not everything will be available on every ship - but we are trying hard to provide you with a broad spectrum of possibilities. Abilities are the best way to define and refine your play style with an individual ship.

You can also modify your weapons. I can't go into much detail on that - since we aren't sure yet how much we can open this up. But be ensured that you can further refine your play style with the choice of your weapons.

On top you can modify your crew. Not much details on that either, but we are talking about stat bonuses like more health in exchange for less speed, more missile range, higher speed bonus when directing your energy to the drive and nifty things like that. Again - further play style refining. You might see a pattern here ;D

Obviously not everything is available right at the start. You have to unlock additional options through your progression. Play - rank up - get more stuff. Simple as that.

We are trying hard to achieve a "horizontal" progression. It's not like you get the weak abilities at the start and unlock the better one later on. You don't unlock better stuff, you unlock more tactical options.

Sure, some things will come handier for some players then other things. And we are in no way immune to balance problems - but that why we look forward to work with you all to fix those issues =)

In addition to the whole modification of your play style, there is also the "vanity customization". There you could modify the look of your ship - but this will have no influence on your performance in the game. And yeah - contrary to all the other things I've mentioned before - this is the part where you could pay some money.

I hope I could answer some questions.