That's so much better. Here's why:
More flat planes of a solid color make it much more readable, ditching the fuzzy shading style, which I don't particularly care for and which hurts readability.
You made use of more desaturated colors, which I think are easier on the eye.
There's a more evident light source.
Here's what I think you should do:
Make more use of the colors you have.
Saturate some colors a bit more than you have to increase color identity. (I'm actually having a debate with myself whether saturation is a preference or if it really does help on a black background.)
Get rid of highlights, they disrupt color identity. You can keep them, if you want, but too much isn't a great thing. Build form with shadow.
And to show you what I mean, because so much is lost in words,
My shading is not correct because things so geometric like ships aren't my forte, natural things like animals are (lame, yeah) but I hope you get the idea.
Just a question, though. The old ships lacked an outline, which worked on the dark background. These new ones have one. Are they going to be on the same background? Depending on the color of your outline it could either buffer against the black as a sort of rough AA, or make the ship pop from the background.
Take what you will, but if something seems wrong to you then don't.