I was going to ask this question myself. I do know this. The guys in the top 20 are pretty damn good. It seems the more I play, the higher I go, whether I'm any good or not. I am assumimg the guys here with the longest tenure, i.e. the longest playing time, are the leaders.

The more stats one builds up, the longer it takes to effectively change rank. For example, I have shot down 1500 aircraft and been shot down or crashed 1500 times. I'm batting .500. To change that, either kills or deaths must significantly increase compared to the other. That won't happen when a pilot has peaked, when he doesn't get any better. Just like sports. It's easy to go from 130 to 100 in golf, but damn hard to go from 99 to 75! The best pitchers and batters are at the top, as it should be.

So something else must be taken into account to enable us to competively move up. Accuracy, consistancy, number of battles, wins/losses. Things like that. I'm pretty certain the game measures accuracy. In practise, if I shoot down all the targets quickly and with little ammo, I get a perfect rating. If I use a lot of ammo, I get an average rating.

As I just said, though, those guys at the top are pretty damn good. If they stop playing though, they will begin to drop. This tells me kill/death ratio is significant (points at the end of a game, any game), number of battles is significant, accuracy is significant, and number of kills is significant (again points at the end of a game). Taken together to calculate rank.

Capturing airfields and killing ground targets are significant in strike and CAT, again leading to points at the end of the game.

Bottom line: play a lot to stay on top (this is obvious-they want you to play their game!), shoot straight, don't die, and get some kills, lots of kills. It will be tough for new players to reach the top 20 so long as the leaders keep playing. I'm at 33 in dogfight and most certainly am not close to the best. It is interesting to watch and see how high I can go. It is motivating me now as I have already gotten everything else. I'm sure others are too. Hence, we keep playing the game!!!!