You're absolutely right. I came back to post about finding the answer to my problem and saw your post, which basically sums it up.
For some reason, my Winzip "Use folder names" extraction flag became unchecked between the Vavoom 1.30 and 1.32 installations so that the 1.32 basev directory wasn't created (and, as you point out, the basev directories from the two versions are not compatible, apparently.)
Anyway, once the new Vavoom 1.32 basev directory was created, I was able to Vlaunch Strife.
My only problem now is that I can't get this version to SetResolution to 1920 1080 32. The highest it seems to go is 1650 1080 32 (which I found out after I gave up trying to do this from Vlaunch and tried setting the resolution in the console.) I had no problems with this in Vavoom version 1.30.