The black wire wrap is called wire loom: we picked it up at Home Depot, but it is also available on Amazon and Robosource.
The wire tether was actually surprisingly tough and resistant to damage: robots could drive over it without damaging the wires. As for handling an opponent tugging on the tether and damaging the wires through pulling on them, you cannot easily see it in the reveal, but we had regular rope running in the tether along with the wires. This rope was tied onto the two robots so that if the tether is pulled, the rope would take the stress instead of the wires.
As a result of these measures, we believe the chance of wire damage is very low.
Adding on to what @Bobtheblob_5327B said, our large wall is made completely out of steel and is a 5-wide sandwiched by two 2-wides. The result of this is that the wall is extremely strong: even we could not noticeably bend it by pushing and we are (I hope 
) stronger than two typical drivetrains pushing at the same time.
Combined with the fact that our wall is at least three feet shorter than VCATâs was, we think that it would be extremely difficult to break the wall unless there were two specially designed 8 motor drive opponents (at which point we still have two mobile robots defending them and win the match regardless).
How heavy was the wall, and how much less tough was it when made of Aluminum?
The larger wall is 11lbs, and the smaller wall is 5lbs. Both are almost exclusively steel c channels; I imagine that the system would be about 1/3 the weight if made with aluminum. You would be wise to bulk up an aluminum wall with high strength axles or buckets of loose steel nylocks, etc.
As an aside, VEX steel is significantly cheaper than aluminum, so it might make sense to just purchase steel if thatâs your intent.
Given your long wall is approximately 8â and your short wall is approximately 3 feet, why wouldnât you deploy just past the dividing line for the 11â8" of the width of the field. (Or otherwise construct a full-field divider.) If you did so with one or both of your mobile units on the opponent side they would be in a world of hurt. At the same time, your partner would have up to 18 extra cubes to work with, heavily biased to purple.
Well donât you think it would be hard to get both of your opposing robots to be on the other side of the field and only having one very long 12 foot long wall would be very very hard to make as well.
Because if they deployed past the line and the opposing robots tried to push through, the wall would catch on the towers, and would thus count as grappling onto field elements
If deployed correctly, a ~12 foot wall actually wouldn not touch more than one face of the towers, and thus not be grappling.
However the reason we did not pursue a wall like this is that first of all, we would have to dramatically reduce the walls strength to get more expansion (itâs right in size with this design). In addition, even with a wall deployed across half the field, the opponents could still score cubes, which means there is a chance they could outcycle our alliance partner. By blocking off the scoring zones, we try to ensure that even if the opponents are faster at stacking, they canât actually score their stacks.
But if another robot forces a robot into penalty the penalty shouldnât count.
Remember that wallbots lose some protection though.
And if that was allowed, then the match would be super boring to watch.
Itâs a bit of a grey area
The only way you arenât going win every match is if they pair you with another wall-bot.
Or a jankbot who canât overcome the excessive defense to outstack your opponentâs auton stack. But the probability of that is pretty low, and only in qualifying rounds.
Jankbot"
So you mean me
Whatâs the car is a Jankbot?
A crappy bot that canât do anything
Or a really badly built one
No, A jank bot can perform really well sometimes in competition. Jankbots are just low-effort, bad quality bots almost purely off looks but janky mechanisms definitely play a role. I would classify a robot that canât do anything as jank but Iâd also include robots that can do well.
Iâve seen some relatively jank bots straight up nae nae in competition.
Anyways, we should keep the thread on topic.
The thread is never on topic.
Aight bois back on topic.
Letâs think up of ways to actually beat the darn thing.