I'm sorry to be too late for replying to your questions

.
- Is it possible to make an animation visible in zoom levels 1 & 2? If not, one would have to make a special (static) prop visible in zooms 1 & 2 only.
I think ... Zoom-Level 1 and 2 are not visible by the setting of SC4-sistem.
This kind of animation has 2 control-files AVP and ATC, and ATC has 5 Z/L.
When I tested Zoom-Level, I made 5 Z/L pictures and set paremeters in ATC, also I set appearanceZoomsflag=1F. Then Z/L 1 and 2 were seen on the iLive Reader but they were not on the LotEditor.
- How can you make the animation moving faster or slower? For example, a very slow animation with the "period" time set to one game-day?
"Faster" is made by thinning out of animation frames, but the SC4-animation has about 10 frames per second. So, it is little difficult to show the animation fast and smooth.
"Slower" is easy by setting Frame-steps(gmax:BAB table) smaller or End-time of Time Configration(gmax) larger.
"Longer" is very difficult. Because animated images are set on the 256x256 bitmap-planes and the bitmap-planes are allowed 256 to use that means to make a longer animation is to make a smaller one. One game-day animation will be a tiny lamp sending signales in morse code (for about an hour in real).
- Is it possible to make an animation that stops after all frames are played (ie one that doesn't cycle, but displaying the last frame), and triggered again in some specific time of day?
If it is possible, BAB can be more useful tool and will get a award for something, but it seems almost impossible.
I tested some parameters about it, but they didn't work.
I only know one SC4-default lot ( 0x2ad50000---ARR16x2x16_CrossingArms_2AD5 ) that has non cycled animations and static images (...animated "open", static open, animated "close", static close...) . It may be controled by a trafic "Effects"(in your territory?)
I hope the answer of "One Shot" to be found in "Effects" .