Hi there! Super interesting stuff!
I tested it the other day and realized one problem early on, that I would run out of coal early on and won't produce more coal than what I'm consuming with dark-age science being made. This would lead me running out of all my coal gone and me stranded and having to restart.

After a couple restarts and trying different things, I resorted to /editor some coal in until I maybe sorta broke even with my coal production and consumption.

Is this something you designed for?

Yes it is. You can see in the only screenshot that I have on this mod simple coal loop that will produce a bit more coal that it will consume. It was originally accident, that you produce just a bit more coal that you will consume with full loop, but it made for interesting game play so it is still there.

I will probably add easy mode in settings just to make it more enjoyable for others as well

That really should be on the front page, that one of the only ways to get enough coal to keep going is through building that loop first.

Yeah that's fair. I had started the game and was experimenting with stuff until I ran out. Once I knew about the loop, I then restarted, tried again and ran out again.

The problem is that there's almost an exact amount of coal to get that loop going and if the player doesn't do it first they're screwed. Comparing the coal in the first chest to the landfill, I find I had way too much landfill than I needed but not enough coal. 5-10 stacks less of landfill but more of coal early game wouldn't hurt for anyone who didn't notice the picture on the mod portal and experiments until they figure out the coal loop exists.

Exactly, if I hadn't seen this discussion before attempting the mod, I definitely wouldn't have gotten far. That's a very complex "first loop" to work out from just knowing the recipes available.

I agree with you, guys. The spare coal production rate is very low. After you automate science packs you can't do anything just wait.
Until I've researched Basic Oil Processing I couldn't do anything other than just wait a few minutes for a few pieces of spare coal to accrue to supply all machines and inserters so that research can proceed a little. It took me few hours just wait for the research and not be able to do anything until I could build heat chemical plant and from there I could start to scale coal production. So basically only now I'm really starting to play. Compared to standard Exotic Industries mod this start is little bit painful. I'm slow player but this start has tested my patience :-)
Is this the intented way of playing?

It is intended to be hard to setup (If it was too easy then it would remove the challenge of making ores out of water) so in this first version I tried to push it to the limit. There will be soon update that will make coal production a bit better and add some other changes that are needed in the mod.

Thanks for the update. I'm going to restart the game and try it again. Although now that I have access to a solid fuel the mod is enjoyable.
BTW: what about the crash when generating new world? I've experienced it too.

Still looking into it. It should be caused by certain mod combination (Basically anything that affects surface can cause it). I am moving surface changes to later point in map generation that should solve it, but it will take some time.

Thanks for the update. I'm going to restart the game and try it again. Although now that I have access to a solid fuel the mod is enjoyable.
BTW: what about the crash when generating new world? I've experienced it too.

I would say there is no need to go back if you have solid fuel. You are exactly at the point at which fun will start with this mod