Is there a standard that developers shoot for when it comes to minimizing gas fees? A certain number that is considered "gold standard"?

Would depend on what needs to be accomplished within contract, yah? There's just more efficient and less efficient ways to accomplish any given set of functions?

Nobody cares unless you’re on Eth as gas is not really an issue.

There’s some other implications I think I read, like allocations based on uint256 as the native variables and that you should group variables of same type. The exception to uint256-rule is when you pack it with structs, which a few devs have started doing.

But really, dont waste your time.