Hello everyone. As promised I'm making a forum post about ruleset for level runs. Even though they are fairly obvious we should not leave any room for misconceptions and agree on the specifics. I'm gonna touch on all the topics I could think of off the top of my head that I think are important. Hopefully I don't miss anything significant. I'll start with the more obvious things first.

1. Side and Version - It does matter on which side we do a specific mission, and it does matter on which version we play it on, so there are separate entries for both sides with both versions.
2. Difficulty - It's completely up to the runner. If you think you would benefit from playing on Easy difficulty, then go for it. If you think, for a specific run, it's better to play on Hard difficulty - it's absolutely fine. Whatever makes you achieve the best time possible for a mission is a good idea.
3. Crashes - Obviously not recoverable. If the game crashes on a level run you just have to redo it. I feel dumb for even mentioning it but whatever. For completion sake I guess.
4. Skips - Collecting letters is naturally allowed. Glitchy on mission skips that do not require influence of external software are also allowed. Any form of cheating is, of course, not allowed.
5. Timer - It it required to use external timing software like LiveSplit. Runs are timed with RTA. What's important and different to all the other types of runs is that the timer must be set up to show miliseconds. Level runs are very short, so there might be a point in time where two or more runs are almost the same duration, so we need miliseconds to be able to tell which one is actually faster. That's the same reason why I don't think we should go by IGT (time on the post-mission scoreboard). Timer should be started as soon as we start a mission and stopped as soon as we win the mission and the victory text shows up.
6. Training Mode - For level runs it is allowed to use the training tab, but it must be used in conjunction with the free campaign mode (not the short campaign, because the free campaign has all missions) by emulating the same missions with exact same values set, like enemy levels (which change depending on the difficulty), type of mission, victory requirements and so on. It's worth noting that it's not always better to simulate campaign mission in the training tab over actually playing that mission in the free campaign. Sometimes it might be more beneficial for your character and your allies to have different levels, but on training mode you can't specificy level values for each team member. It's up to the runner how he wants to run a mission.
7. NG+ Only - Consistency is impossible between regular runs and level runs. When playing either type of campaign we might expect very similar results, like having very similar level at a specific mission, but those are not possible to predict in level runs. In the short campaign order of missions is always the same, but when playing the free campaign mode we may have different routes and mission orders. Therefore level runs are geared towards achieving best possible times in the best possible environments. Because of all that level runs are NG+ by nature. Runners can play with characters and allies on any desirable level. Number of allies and number of enemies and their levels should stay the same as their free campaign's counterpart for consistency. For example AI might act differently with even the slightest difference in their level, so it's best to keep the same values.
8. Video Recording

• If a mission is simulated in the training mode the video must contain all values we set in the "Game" and "Robots" tabs. Runners don't have to show the free campaign counterpart on video.
• If a mission is played in the free campaign mode the video should be started on the team creation screen before starting the mission.

And that should be about it. Hopefully I explained everything well and my reasoning is understandable. If you disagree on something, if you have any other ideas or if you think I missed something important let me know about it down below. From now on doing level runs under these rules is allowed, and I will soon add the ruleset to the "Levels" tab under all sides and versions. If any changes are made I will update them.

Regarding level runs that have been already submitted - They may break some rules that have been established here, but I think they should stay as exceptions. At some point in the future they may become obsolete anyway, so it shouldn't matter. From this point onwards though all level runs must abide by those rules.

Stay safe out there y'all. :)