I love the idea of being on planet again. Just no snow please
Honestly, what if we did a multi-biome map. A map that has a forest area, a Snow area, a desert, and maybe even an oceanic area or grass planes or even a mountain to overlook the others.
In this way no one will get tired of the same old biome cause we have a multitude of environments to use. it could be a sorta 4 corners map with a nice surrounding.
Heck, you could build stuff like a base in the mountain for a pseudo 'castle' base from halo reach for oni's use, or have SoS set up in the tundra or desert. I would recommend (in this case) having the UNSC base modeled after the snow maps base potentially, and have it exist in the center of the bounds.
the main important Item would be to have the Forest an open area for any group, since it would most likely be one of the most interesting areas to enter.
Side recommendations would be to have the Trees climb-swep able, maybe have small platforms that we could put to use, have the desert have a small canyon of sorts (for of a depression) the tundra may be very hillish and have the OH SO IMPORTANT forerunner base (a homage to the old snow map), and the mountain, may have a climbable incline to the top, or a sheer face to climb swep to the top for an overlook of the map.
The last bit would be to use the sky, since we'd have all that empty space. An SoS ship for them to chill on (with grav lift or something) and a unsc ship for naval and ODSTs would also be nice. The ship could have a hangar bay large enough for pelicans so that when we deploy on events, the airforce have somewhere to fly to.
(if SoS had a ship, they probably wouldnt need a ground base then, so that also frees up that)
The ship could have its own power and engine room like that of the station we are on now, so that naval engineers have someplace to work, and the base itself could have its own Separate engine room for power in the base to be able to be cut off.
I Would DEFINITELY recommend porting over the CQB room from our current map, as it sees a lot of use
Just some ideas.