Agree Complaintdesk (love the name btw) That is why once things start being difficult then I terrace a bit. Makes the base more interesting unless one likes it to all look like a putting green.
If all of the places you and buddies have made are hooked together as kind of one big base with workbences etc and ditches and walls then yes you will get lag.
It used to be so much worse. When you would get in range of a big base it would just kill frames like 15 or even 5. If you are having lag then you might want to stop building more right there. I will leave it to smarter folks to add how far away others would need to build to not make it worse. You may need to get on reddit or the Discord site to see if there is an answer there if noone comes up with anything definitive here.