Taking full biomes is rude -- especially rare biomes. Taking more than you need is rude. And rare biomes -- you corner the market, or everything is taken and Frost will put in a resource world -- there goes your monopoly.
Build a 2x2 pillar for a
claim and you get a 202 x 202 area by default. BUT pick what you need and build a wall around it with signs allowing others to build to the wall. Most bases/homes don't need more than 160 x 160, *unless you are building a town*.
A base or home works best with everything within afk distance -- you don't need more than about 160 x 160 for this.
The view distance has been around 6 chunks, or 76 blocks, for ages -- you can only /afk a 153 x 153 area with that. I rounded up the 160 x 160 and aligned the 10 x 10 chunks on the chunk boundary -- gives me 100 chunks with 40 mob limit each -- max of 4000 animals/villagers/mobs. Because Frost may lower the view distance to 4 if lag gets too bad, all the most important afk operations should be keep in the center 129 x 129. I don't expect the view distance to get bigger than 6 or 7 -- Frost will just let more players on instead.
In the old world, I had 6 large bases (from 64x64 to 200x200). I had at least 6 smaller bases which were around 32x32 and 40 animal delivery depots (1 chunk each -- 16x16) scattered every 5,000 blocks. And I had 2 towns. Note that these dozen bases were developed one by one over 2 years of playing. I allowed others to build to my boundary fences/walls. Same with my 40,000+ long railroad.
The scattered bases were frustrating because things grew, mob-dropped and breed only when I was at each base.
I vowed in this new world to have 1 main base with everything in afk distance of my centered home. The main base will remain private and I will create other bases for public use or paid access use. Still need animal delivery depots but the new world is small, I don't need 64 depots -- 8 will do to start. Don't need a 40,000 block rail in the main world if I can use 5,000 blocks of rail in the Nether (8:1 ratio) to connect the same points. I do have a nether fortress
claimed which I plan to develop into 2 public blaze farms and wither skeleton farm -- may leave the area only partially developed with the lower spawn rates because hovering over the blaze spawners and hunting mobs as they appear is relaxing
In this new world, I marked out a 160 x 160 square that is 1/2 desert (including a village) and 1/2 ocean for my single main base. I have
claimed 17k blocks by golden shovel so far of the 25.6k blocks in the 160x160 area. And I will
claim 160x160 in deep ocean when I am ready to build my public access farms -- hopefully butted up to my other
claim. But I will put a border wall around the
claims and allow others to build/
claim to the border rather than
claim 100 blocks out from the wall. Note that I am still deciding how far to
claim in each direction of my main base -- decision based on any other spawners we find in the abandoned mine -- really want a skelly spawner -- I won't be surprised if I end up with something like 200 x 200 and put a colored sheep farm and my tree plantations away from the center.
There are 3 other players sharing my base with me and we have some large operations in progress -- villager trading supported by massive farms, animal sales, 3 slime chunks to develop, 2 cave spider spawners to develop. These need to be spread out due to the 40 mob chunk cap. WE STILL FIT IN LESS THAN A DEFAULT 202 x 202
claim.
I will extend my
claim as I buy
claim blocks and only marked the minimum size I need for this main base. If I can raise the money and no one has built nearby, I will expand to a max of 320 x 320 -- four (4) afk areas -- 3 for public farms and one will remain private -- could be 160 x 640 or any other shape using 4 squares. I am not worried about being boxed in, because with /home and /warp, I can put a second 160 x 160 base anywhere when I am ready to expand. Just nice to have them all together.
Note that the 4 of us will be creating a town, for others to buy into, elsewhere in the world which will be 500 x 500 or so in size -- my main base is an industrial area -- this time I want the surface to remain nice looking and put everything underground. That lets me build a nice castle home with pretty views in each direction to the view distance limit. And as I putter around my base, all the afk actions continue -- growing, breeding, mob-dropping, etc.