I've been looking for a mod that basically re-balances many aspects of the game - removing the exploits, reducing the gold supply, those sorts of things. I've read through the descriptions of all mods of that type and I think I've finally found one that most closely suits my needs - BTB's Game Improvements. Unfortunately, it of course doesn't do every little thing exactly the way I'd like. There are a few game settings or object settings within the several .esps of this mod that I'd like to tweak a bit. Problem is, I've never modded at all, I've never used the CS. Now I have a background in programming (although from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away), and I'm sure if I invested LOTS of time and effort I could understand all this stuff but that's the whole point, I'm trying to find the quickest and easiest way to understand how to accomplish a seemingly simple act - load an .esp file, modify a few settings, then "recompile" it with no problems, if such a process exists. I actually tried starting up the CS blind, not knowing what I was doing, then loading the .esp in question, but there literally was no visible data anywhere that I could find, I couldn't see any easily accessible fields of data or values. I'm sure I missed something.

So just tell me, to do what I want to do, do I need to put in a lot of time learning how to use CS, or is there some other 'quick and dirty' way to accomplish this?

Any help is appreciated.

The data is in the lists. There's about 79 of them, and they're in the big box with (79) tabs. Or maybe 20, or so.

As far as a lot of game tweak stuff like that goes, it'll be scripts or game settings. There's an editor for scripts, you can open it through one of the main-menu options. There's a list of GMSTs, it's listed as game settings I think, again, main menu (I don't know which drop-down exactly, though).
Being able to program, you should be able to understand scripts (it's a very simple language, a few quirks, but essentially readable).

To see exactly what's been modified, when you select the datafiles in the editor, click the row for the BTB improvement mod and hit details. Write down the names of anything that stands out.

On the scripting language see http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?id=6083&view=Mods.Detail.

For a number of beginner's introductions to the CS see http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tutorials.

Incidentally, this is exactly how I got my start in modding.

Anyways, if you're still around, what exactly did you want changed? For curiosity's sake, of course.