I really like this site and I've been wondering about this for a while
Is it better to use a bigger sized texture like 256x256 or to use a smaller 16x16 and just scale it upwards? I've had problems before about having too many repeating(?) textures where i had to upscale some to make the compile work and I've read somewhere that the max amount you can scale safely would be 9x.

Let's say that I'm using a solid color texture (kinda cartoonish) on a really big wall and quality of the image wouldn't really matter, so what would be the right thing to do in that situation?

By scaling textures will it decrease performance in game, will using a lot of 256x256 textures be bad on performance or just bad on the map download, do animating textures have a downside, do any of these matter in today's computers, have i asked enough questions yet? If anyone can answer any of those questions I'll be really thankful thanks for your time.