At least, there's no game manual to be found in my game library on Steam. What is prompting this game question specifically, now, is that I see that sometimes when I hover the mouse cursor over a fleet it will show how many ships in the fleet and the Logistics cost for all those ships combined. Other times, what I see is combined hit points, number of moves, and sensor range. NEVER all that info on one panel. And for the life of me, I haven't a clue how to toggle from one info panel to the other.
There are actually quite a few game mechanics that I am guessing at rather than knowing by having read a non-existent game manual. Things like, How do you remove Stellar Marines from an Troop Transport without assaulting a planet? After having populated a conquered planet with Marines, why don't they fight better than regular civilians if the enemy counterattacks shortly thereafter? Just how much Influence does it take to annex an enemy planet next door? How can you tell that dispatching a Constructor to a starbase will even be able to improve function X or function Y before you send off the vessel on that long voyage? How do you _______ x 25 or 50 other questions.
I suspect that there IS a game manual that can be accessed.... somewhere. I just haven't found that somewhere just yet.