Just finished the Carrier mission:
https://youtu.be/8FeIdMd1QMg
Carrier is a really awesome level. It starts off with about 2 minutes of boring stuff but after that it gets crazy. There's a huge room right at the beginning that has a ton of bad guys in it. You're intended to slowly kill all of the enemies and use your phone to unlock the gate. But enemies are really not a problem in a TAS so I just run past them all. I take a ton of damage here but it's worth it since the second half of the level is mostly stealth. It's also faster to kill enemies later in the level than it is to kill them here. I have some time to kill after using the phone so i moved behind cover to reduce damage taken.
I get out an SMG after going through the next room since it makes killing enemies much faster. I always kill enemies in-between sprints since you can't shoot and sprint at the same time. It takes barely any time to kill enemies here with the Sigmus 9.
When i get to the aircraft carrier, i do the first useful hover in this run. Hovering is done by mashing A and B sequentially. A is to sprint and B is to reload. By mashing these two buttons very quickly, you will cause Bond to fall down slower than he normally would. This only works when going down stairs and its use is limited since you can't skip checkpoints. This hover allows me to get on top of the carrier and get to the second floor without going to the first floor. I haven't timed this hover precisely but it saves at least 10 seconds. It also prevents enemies from spawning in that room, which is convenient. (I shot a bullet before doing the hover so my sprint would be long enough to complete it. For me to have enough energy to sprint long enough for the hover, i had to cut off an earlier sprint and shooting is the fastest way to do that.)
Another huge time save in this level is falling down the ladders in this level, which i didn't know was possible until now. I knew it was possible in other levels but i couldn't fall down these ladders when i initially routed this game.
I also found a really cool trick that saves a few frames when it's done. After shooting, there is a certain amount of time before you can reload, sprint, equip the silencer, or use the cellphone. This delay lasts for about 8 frames (if i recall correctly). However, it is possible to cancel that delay by pressing L for one frame, waiting one frame, then doing the action you wanted to do. This saves ~6 frames each time this is done, which is pretty nice. I don't know for sure how much time this would have saved in the previous levels but i don't remember having any problems with this delay before Carrier. But I know for sure this will save some time in later levels.
At 3:30, I go into a room with 3 different objectives. 2 of these objectives require using the cellphone and 1 of them is to defuse a bomb. There is a guard in front of the bomb, which i must kill before vaulting over the rail later on. I kill him with 1 headshot as soon as i can (I could have shot him earlier but a headshot from farther away would have not been enough damage to kill). Then i use the delay cancel trick mentioned above to get my phone out sooner. While i'm waiting for the phone to finish doing its thing, I pick up some very convenient body armor. I kill the next two enemies then cancel the delay again to complete the next phone objective. Then i disarm the bomb and get out of there.
After rescuing the last hostage, I go to the cargo bay, which is a pretty difficult room in a real-time speedrun. But this isn't a real-time speedrun, so it's not very difficult. Once i get to the button at the end of the room, i have to wait for the cargo lift before i can go to the next section. This gives me lots of time to play around and shoot some bad guys. I switch to another SMG to make this room a little bit more fun. The rest of the level is very straightforward. The movement at the end may look strange, but it's only because the camera is moving around while explosions are happening.
This where the game starts really picking up. More action and less boring stuff from here on. The next level is Outpost, which is pretty fun. I'm really proud of how the TAS has been going so far and I can't wait to start working on the next level.
Edit: updated the video with a higher-quality version.
