How do you beat a mission in under a minute?

Solution 1:

I am, alas, wrong. Cheaters are moderately-frequent, spurred at least partially by the existence of a badge to "score in the top 10, on a map that has been played at least 20 times." The times are spread out semi-randomly because some people cheat by sending a fraudulent report to the server, and some other people cheat by playing with trainers to give them more resources (which gives them an excellent, but not perfect, score).

Source: lots of people complaining. Apparently, the only way to know whether someone is cheating on a map is to:

  1. Be very good at the game
  2. Play the map
  3. If someone beat your score by a large margin, they're probably cheating. Or they figured out a clever way to win, and/or you're not as good as you thought you were.

Alternatively, find the names of a few top-tier players. If they've played the map you're looking at, then anything better than those times is likely the result of cheating.

Solution 2:

I won't say this in every scenario, but typically scores/times below 50 seconds that do not have a forge, or "consistently" flat ground will most likely be cheated scores.

Without any forge upgrades, it takes roughly that long without any energy.

If it's below 20 seconds, it's 99.9% cheated. For storymode missions, it's 100% cheated.