What I want is for me to have a reason not to keep them from freezing.
You have a reason to keep them from freezing.
Its called not dying from freezing.
Thats a pretty severe, obvious and concrete reason to keep them from freezing, if you ask me!
Which, ironically and contradictorily, is exactly the reason you want to remove.
As for a reason NOT to keep them from freezing, that is up to you.
Reasons are multitude. Maintaining your territory, repairing, consolidating forces, moving units to warmth in sectors in anticipation of post-blizzard pushes or defense.
If you, however, feel you have a reason to suicide your troops, and pay the economic cost for that, for whichever reason, then go ahead and sacrifice models if that is your inclination.
Id argue that is a pretty stupid decision, due to the economic cost, but if you want to lose models, go ahead.
There are plenty of reasons NOT to keep them from freezing. All of them strategic, tactical and ultimately economical as well, as long as you dont allow them to die (which is the limitation you are proposing to remove).
What improvement would removing death from cold provide?
Capacity to overextend infantry that is anyways combat incapable due to cold modifiers?
No benefit and no strategic use.
Capacity to leave units stranded in the middle of snow, completely combat incapable duemto cold modifiers?
No benefit or strategic use.
You asked me two questions, which I answered below.
Kindly reciprocate an answer to my single following question:
What concrete improvement to the game would removing death from cold provide?
Let me give you two simple questions: how often do your units freeze to death? How often do you radically alter your strategy to avoid freezing to death?
My answers are "never" and "never, because it's so easy to keep them from dying." What are your answers?
1) Never, unless I am forced into a last ditch situation where the sacrifice is necessary for winning.
2) I almost always radically alter my strategy to keep units from freezing, because, as we have already agreed, as also in my statement above, only in extreme circumstances is the economic cost worthwhile. In all other cases, I always formulate my strategy to avoid freezing, specifically, and directly, to avoid that economic cost.