[Parasite]

Ice colonies in the standard game are very playable. I always take Ice because most other players are from earth and take Ox-Rock. This lets me get a colony trade in early and use the goodwill from that to build my position and allies.

If Colony trading is forbidden for some reason, ice is still just as good as rock. There is a minor issue I have heard of in that the methane ice worlds have one less picture, so are a bit less common, but this is hard to test without creating multiple maps and doing counts with error bars ect.

Possible have Ice take 1K more rads (to keep warm) Gas take more minerals, and Rock take more organics (while waiting for the first crops to come in)

I like the idea of slowing down colonisation in this way. It will tend to help people that manage existing colonies well verses the fighters out there. IMHO the essence of a strategic game.