[TAS] Precious Cargo in

I never really thought much of this level, but it turns out there are tons of optimizations in this level! First, you want to manipulate all the traffic to be in the best possible places. You would think having no traffic at all would be the best, but Zoe (the driver) will choose which lane she stays in based on the other cars on the road. She wants to avoid hitting them, if possible, which means she can take different lines if there are cars in the way. There are multiple occasions where Zoe cuts corners or drives through oncoming traffic because it's her best option at the time. The best example of this is the part right after the armored van at 0:44, where Zoe drives in the middle of the road through oncoming traffic to take a better line to the left.

The next big time save comes from a crazy boost in the courtyard at 1:47. Zoe normally drives through this area pretty slowly, but clever traffic manipulation causes the enemy to get stuck for just long enough that he speeds up again to catch up with you. When this happens, he pushes you forward, saving time. You might notice that I shoot in weird places here, but it's all to manipulate RNG for the traffic. For whatever reason, shooting the area in front of enemy vehicles causes them to react in different ways.

The next thing I want to talk about is the staircase shot at 2:15. JtpG suggested that I shoot the staircase on the wall there to have it land on the back side of the car and push me forward, and it totally worked! It saved just under a tenth of a second, but every frame counts!

I want to give special thanks to BDown for coaching me through all the optimizations in this level as well as getting me to try out some ideas he had, as well as aleckermit and JtpG for coming up with ideas and giving their thoughts on the TAS while I was working on it.