I'm currently on an ice sheet on permadeath, and also in a mountainous so I won't run out of supplies. I landed a month ago, and my colony is somewhat stable. What should I do? I know I should rush hydroponics, but I have a mod which allows me to buy soil from traders and use it as ground. Sunlamps are not needed since I have skylight mod. Please tell me, what should I try to do to survive well?
The most important in an ice sheet are food.
You need to etablish so fast you can some growing zones. Hydroponics or soil doesn't matter. So long you can do one of them soon.
And maybe you should think about at chemfuel generator while on Ice sheet because they produce some heat too, which reduce the cost for heating. And maybe you can buy later Boomalope's to milk chemfuel.
Making soil removes one of the major constraints for ice sheet.
Ice sheet w/o cannibalism is indeed a race to get hydroponic growing set up in vanilla. You can sunlamp gravel to grow potatoes, but it's pretty inefficient since you won't get much in any given sunlamp area. If you can get 60+ tiles maybe it's worth doing to enclose that and grow potatoes immediately. In terms of steel and components it's inefficient but eventually you'll have tons of those, and you don't have much food right now.
If you put tribal in ice sheet I hope you like cannibalism.