No problem! For certain textures that I want to preserve legibility for, I just don't scale them down to 128x128 or 256x256. I keep the original resolution and play around with how near/far the face I'm projecting it onto is. That part is more of a feel rather than a hard cap so unfortunately, I can't give you exact numbers. Especially since not all textures are the same resolution to begin with. I do periodic test rendering to see if everything looks good to me personally.
I also cheat a little bit by adding a 10-15% noise filter in Photoshop after a render is complete. Unsure if it'll work with animations as well, I haven't tried yet. I'm thinking it will but maybe not as smoothly as just applying a filter.
As for the cables/rope, I found
this video and it seems in line with what you are asking. It
is a couple years old at this point so updates might've changed around where certain things are, but the functionality should still work. Satisfactory for a quick and easy solution anyway.