Yeah, a lot of what your saying makes sense. For your intentions.
I’ve noticed some landmasses. Big enough to fit the picture of a large landmasses already. I guess when using the term. Larger landmasses/one large landmass at least. Its the expectations of feeling your not on an island and something more of a continent compared to the other islands. The islands are snaky for the most part in some cases. In others, theirs a lot of smaller islands. But you normally always have a few larger islands. Its really all on spawn. And in those few cases once in a while. You’ll get those all sandstone maps. Which is just the roll of the dice as it stands.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever played terra firma craft. The heavily modded mod for minecraft. Which try’s to make minecraft as true to survival and crafting, to a notch. I’m not trying to get off topic =). But, one of their future plans. Is to create a world generation to focus on the part. You wouldn’t be able to get all you need. To advance in certain areas in till you explored the other islands. As each island will have it’s own unique set of resources types. Forcing players to have to leave and to explore other continents to get their hands on other types of ores and blocks. With each landmass being around 2000-3000 block round. So lets say. The continent you spawn on, had everything but nickel for bluesteel. You’d be force to go to another continent to get it. Because nickel only spawns in certain types of rocks. Which aren’t on your landmass. Now I’m not saying I know how the system works. I was just using that as an example. From one of their future plans for world generation.