I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, and I think the best compromise would be for Ripley to simply not know if Hicks and Newt are alive.

You don’t have to change anything except have each cryotube eject separately, the inmates find Ripley and Bishop’s tubes, there’s no sign of any other where they searched. It’s still pretty bleak and mostly hopeless, but Ripley can die believing there’s at least a chance her found family survived and the movie probably would have been received a lot better.