The RTA timing of this run is 21:38.317 which is the frame you have control of the Arwing on level 1 to the frame you lose control after beating andross. This beats the current RTA record by over 33 seconds.
-Normal mode is chosen because more bombs appear which helps save time.
-Any and all horizontal and vertical movement is kept to an absolute minimum as this does slow you down. Lag reduction strategies are also prevalent in this run; any time I go into First-person view it's to prevent laggy animations from being shown. I also only destroy enemies as necessary so that they don't get in my way or cause lag later on.
-Using all of your boost at once is simply not optimal. After some testing it was found that holding boost for 16 frames and letting it refill was the fastest you could go.
Corneria - Zooming. Also picking up lasers for the boss and bombs for Katina skip later on. Ending the level with more or fewer points or teammates has no effect on the timing of the end-of-level cutscene.
Meteo - Zooming
Katina - The mothership will first appear once 10 enemies are killed. A precise bomb shot can kill all 10 instantly (a weird quirk is that if you're already facing the mothership spawn location when the 10th enemy is destroyed, then it won't actually appear until you look away for a frame, so I delay my u-turn by just a bit so it'll spawn). All 4 hatches are already spawned inside the mothership moving in a circle along with the ship. Using several well-placed bombs you can destroy the hatches before they ever appear and then destroy the core once it appears.
Sector X - Zooming
Sector Z - Just waiting around for the first missile to appear. I take out my teammates so they can't heroically destroy the missiles themselves. They are shot down while the Great Fox is not on screen which prevents lag. The only other optimization you can perform is to be a significant distance away from the missile as it approaches the Great Fox. Once the game recognizes you are far enough away it will skip the wait time for the final 10 meters and go straight into the cutscene
Bolse - Fast booms, then zoom. After destroying all 6 energy towers you need to get 10 points in order to make the core appear. Team star wolf shows up just in time to explode.
Venom 1 - Zooming and done!
Lylat saved before a resistance could even be formed
Possible improvements
Katina - I was able to get 3 out of 4 hatches with one bomb a piece, but the 4th took 2 bombs. Getting 5 hits on a hatch from the underside is incredibly precise, but technically possible. Also the core could have been destroyed 3-4 seconds earlier if I was better positioned to fire a bomb at it. As is, I had to wait for my boost to recover so that I could do a somersault to bomb it.
Tanking damage - Something I've never had access to is the actual speed that Fox is traveling (i.e. specific x,y,z coordinates of Fox's location). In certain sections where I have to move all the way to the side of the screen to avoid obstacles I don't actually know if it would be faster to just take a hit and fly through the obstacle or avoid it.
Because I don't have Fox's speed or location there is also one other potential optimization that has eluded me, and that's about moving to the side as quickly or as slowly as possible when necessary. There's a specific mechanic in this game that undeniably helped me with my maximum score runs which is the ability to tilt and/or barrel roll left or right. Doing so greatly increases your turning ability, but I don't know if it ultimately loses me forward momentum versus just moving as smoothly as possible. All I have to work with is what feels right. Once I can create a visual representation of my dilemma (barring any forthcoming ram data) I will try to post in the math topic about the situation.
