All you have to do to get a low rank is to make sure you play the whole game;
Absolutely.
You your goal is just having a score in the hundreds, this alone would suffice, as many players just leave out certain parts of the game which they don't care for. One can excel as a fighter pilot, his overall rank will be very low if he doesn't do anything else
You'll also need to capture a base or two in both GV's and in a C-47
You need that for a very high bomber / vehicle rank, or when really going for #1 overall rank.
I always end up myself in top 10 overall rank (or very close to it) without having a single base capture in anything. Just playing in all modes and having some vehicle damage hit% is all I need for that. Don't even need to milk town center after town center

So the only thing I actively and purposely do for score: At the beginning of each month I get some vehicle damage hit % by rockets or torpedo, and that's all I need for the rest of the tour to have a decent CV commanding capability - because I basically play the whole game.
An average player will have some lesser success for sure, but the principle stays the same.
As a general rule, it's easy to improve your score by several 100s by just playing a diverse game, but it's very difficult (and stressful) to get from 10 to 1, requiring not only skill and knowledge, but also often a lot of potentially unfunny self restraint