Thanks @sterretje , apologies for putting the question in the wrong forum, I must admit I'm a little confused as I thought I had worded my question in a non-project specific way. My issue is related purely with the ESP8266 microcontroller and is not related to a specific project. I'm mostly perplexed over the myriad options for the board manager and wanting to ensure I've not missed something that could be causing this. As such I thought installation and troubleshooting was appropriate, as I'm not sure if I've installed the board manager options correctly and I am in the process of troubleshooting it! 
I'll be trying the decoder later today, hopefully it'll provide some more meaningful context.
I'm assuming there is some hardware difference with the clones, but would hope they wouldn't be so massively different as to not be able to perform basic wifi tasks, I'll be speaking to the vendor (Once I've got the exception decoder running )and hopefully getting a meaningful response!