If you can look at these two starbases and not know that one would do far better in combat than the other than I don't think you know how combat works.

Isn't vigilant the tech that allows you to research fortifications? Adding +5 +5 +5 to each ship within range? That is probably why.

I'm not seeing that in my  xml.

etc.

I see it now. I'd still like an official word on if this is intentional or an oversight. The Arcean tech\vigilant trait don't seem to have changed from base to crusade except for this. They also back ported many crusade changes to the base game, so if it was intentional then why not this? It doesn't strike me as an obvious change. They might have decided to remove the extra hitpoints, but why then leave the defense increase, especially when the great loss of attack power would make the small increase in defense irrelevant?