Too bad, our mod is just not in the stable area yet, Boriss.
I believe it will be better then.
No, you won't need a steam version as we can just add the steam update files into our mod.
Also, you still will he able to play multiplayer trough tunngle using our launcher.
Often crashing at the beginning means it has issues loading, is your Computer from the older generations?
No idea about the whitescreen one, can you repeat this issue?
If not it was just a random memory issue, otherwise you are missing some of our textures or from the vanilla game in your installation (not complete?).
I'm sorry to hear you're frustrated. EAW indeed is one of the frustratiog ones. We all suffer this, there are also some days when it works fine.