I come from an older generation I suppose in which I'm used to reading nice spiral bound 300 page manuals before I play a game. Obviously this has long since gone the way of the floppy disk, but I still like to have some sort of guide to what I'm doing when I try a new game. I've tried a few different mods which seem awesome, but I have no idea how the ships are balanced/rock-paper-scissored against each other. Vanilla Sins at least  I can find some pretty comprehensive written guides, but something like Thrawn's Revenge or Armada 3, while clearly just dripping with polish, i have no real idea of how to approach other than "build more of the big ships if you can".

Is there any way I can improve my ability to understand how to play these mods other than watching 22-hour long YouTube Let's Plays? I supose there is that, but it s a huge turnoff to me.