Ice is the best fucking map and besides lag late game (which is almost none existent nowadays) it's amazing.
People hate because of cadehugging.....stop cadehugging then. @TheDexFiles and I have all sorts of flanks, breaches, holdouts, and even suicide charges on that map and it's a fun experience for both sides too.
Xenos holding out underground around bar and securing there? Lure them with the tank down the Dorms Elevator and send squads down excav ladders and Hydro.
One of my top rounds on ice was near its removal. As Alpha SL I spoke with Dex the CO on possible maneuvers to seize victory when xenos think they'll have an easy win on this map. Delta was sent down near Bar and Aero Dome to lure xenos over there and reinforce that area. Once we pulled them out my squad finished fixing upper reactors in engineering towards the northern part of the map I lead my squad down there. Most were hesitant but when you see yer SL charge carelessly down a ladder into the darkness and kill a Warrior and Lurker moral rises. With sniper spec, 2 engineers, medic, 4 PFCs, and an SG, we set up multiple portable cades and a M56D facing west down the hallway and began the act of holding against all goddamn odds.
Myself and another engineer helped me set up the reactors, set up the SMES, repair APCs, and seal off the doors with welds and bolts. We held for a good 10 minutes, most of us near crit with the sheer amount of acid from spitters and boilers but we fucking held that shit. Soon after 2 full squads come swarming from the west after dropping down at LZ2 and the rest of my squad comes down the engineering ladders reinforcing our old. Lead my squad south through multiple walls I blew open with C4 and rushed south and pulled off one hell of a flank. Xenos pinned from the north and south in the hallway being shredded to pieces by Specs, SGs, and multiple ungas.
The amount of things you can pull off on that map is amazing and actually balanced. All it takes is to use your brain and not follow the swarm of marines wanting to cadehug the LZ for some damn reason or listen to the dumbass CO who says to poor through one ladder, one marine at a time into a death bit. There's multiple ways to get underground and you have OT nades to blow apart those first layers of defenses and C4 to blow open walls to open flanks. Setting up traps as you lure xenos into a different part of the underground and force them into a killbox and blowing them to pieces with OT claymores, C4, or even just the good ol' fuel tank and bullet trap.
As for people saying it's hard to navigate, it's not different from any other map. Literally just look at the map from the wiki and see where shit is. Not hard and doesn't require above room temperature IQ unless I'm misinformed on how hard it is to read a map.
Bring back my map and leave it as is.
- Doctor Compy, ICE IS BEST