The problem ended up being that copper required water to mine, which required an offshore pump, which required copper to make.
All I had to do was add a base item for the burner miner and offshore pump that you're given at the start.
I'll actually implement the ability to change base items at some point... I started working on a GUI library to soften the pain points I have with making GUI's but I burned myself out on that, so that'll have to wait.
I got distracted implementing SE compatibility as well as fixing some PyAE issue, so sorry for the late reply/fix. Either way, I've released a fixed version.