Welcome to FT!

Your route looks okay; you obviously realize that with the surface segments you're leaving several flights that you've paid for on the table. I might be inclined in your position to look at alternatives using cheap local flights to close the "open jaws" such as HAN-BKK or LAS-LAX; this would let you conserve segments that might be more useful elsewhere - look at the Caribbean or Central America for example. But of course it's your call.

Regarding the economy v. business class and its impact on miles/points collection, that too is a judgement call. With a DONE4 you'd have a pretty good chance of achieving elite status in your chosen frequent flyer program; this will be very difficult in flying economy.

Elite status and miles/points really takes me to a point I make to people contemplating long trips like RTWs, using just three words: Make a plan.

By this I mean, consider working up a medium term - say 3 to 5 year - travel plan. Call it a mini-bucket list, or a "blue sky" plan, whatever, and then relate it to your short term travel plans and budgets.

A well crafted business class RTW can result in elite status that makes everyday flying more pleasant - more luggage allowance, lounge access, whatever - but can also result in accumulating enough miles/points that some of your travel can be at very low cost.

An example: although AA's program has recently changed (much for the worse IMO) a few years ago my wife and I instituted a rolling three-year plan that was - for us - a very effective way to travel very comfortably at remarkably low cost. We would buy a DONE4 or DONE5 (usually starting in South Africa) in year one and use it to travel for that calendar year, visiting places on our own priority lists - Africa, Australia, South America, family in Israel, New York and Alaska... all of it in business or first class.

Over that year we'd each earn upwards of 120,000 AA frequent flyer miles (counting elite and class of service bonuses) that we'd then spend in the following year with a limited travel plan - maybe just a return trip to Europe in business class, or a couple of domestic first class trips within the US.

Then in the third year we'd repeat the process. Pay for an RTW for year 3, fly on awards in year 4, and so on. We did several iterations of this.

The result was, counting the 16 segments in the RTW and, say, 4-6 segments using the miles, that we were getting upwards of 20 business- or first class flights over two years at an average cost of something like US$250 or $300 per flight. That's pretty good for Seattle to Chicago, but hard to beat for London to Sydney or New York to Hong Kong.

But each person has to develop his/her own benefit/cost metric. Maybe that works for us but wouldn't for you. The point being, what can it hurt to work up a list of places you'd like to see and then use RTW tickets (and award tickets, and tickets bought on Ryanair or easyJet and...) as one of the tools in your kit to bring it about. Easter Island? Patagonia? Siberia? Easy on an RTW, hard using conventional methods. Dream big.

Again, welcome!