minecraft-java-edition
According to the wiki,
mobCap = constant * chunks / 289
It's obvious I'm not going to be changing the constant, or the / 289 part, so how can I change the variable chunks? Well, to answer that question, I first have to know: what an eligible chunk? Is it a chunk in the 17*17 area around the player, or is there a more specific criteria?
Thanks for the help!
As @09stephenb stated correctly, on Single Player Minecraft, only chunks in render distance are updated. This begs the question: what is the render distance for Single Player? You can adjust it in the Options > Video Options page, at the Render Distance option.
(source: cursecdn.com)
The higher the number of chunks, the farther you can see. Hence, more blocks are rendered, which might lower the game's performance. For the picture's example of 12 chunks (which is the default), you can see blocks in a 192 block radius (give or take).
Note however that chunks are 16 blocks wide, 16 blocks long, and 256 blocks deep. If you are mining very far below your farm, it will continue to be calculated. What matters most is horizontal distance.
A friend on mine did a little digging and stumbled on the answer. There's a bug that causes mob spawning to stop if you set the server-side chunk distance to lower than 10.
https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-42053
Solution: set it to 10 or above.
Problem solved. No great M$ conspiracy.
Best Answer
It's the 17x17 around all players. This doesn't matter if you playing solo, but can be quite a drag if you're playing multiplayer and everyone has a mob farm!