Guys,
Seems many pilots in the top 50 score fly fighters on "Fighter" setting at the first few days of a new month, fly tentatively and get a hand full of kills (with no deaths), then set their fighters to "Attack" the rest of the month to preserve their stats.
Do I have that about right?
If not, detail their method(s).
Not criticizing them. Just trying to understand their method(s).
EDIT: Getting back into the game after being off a year, these are things I've always wondered about.
Thank you,
Slade 
Many players in the top 5 fighter rank hide behind jets and temps for their main scoring plane. These planes give you tremendous amounts of points when you land a sortie, as well as make it much easier to shoot players down and escape the fight to land. Then they fly other planes in attack mode to avoid messing those stats up. When I look at players scores, I always look at what they are flying and how many kills. Jets for example only score as fighter, so you sometimes get a good indication of how many of their fighter rank kills are with a jet and it generally explains why their rank is so high.
Early in the month its much easier to look good because not everyone has flown as many sorties, so you'll look good even with minimal points and good stats, or lots of points with lower other stats. Points are the main factor that prevent a high rank with low #s of sorties. You could be top 5 in every category but if you dont have points due not enough sorties or lands, you won't be in the top 5. Points have always been my weakness since I dont get to play much and don't land every sortie ,(because I choose to fight) dieing with 2 kills will increase your K/H so theres a slight trade off. Landing, while taking time away from K/H is crucial to getting points when you dont get to play much. Balancing kills per time with high K/D while also getting enough points is the balancing act. The more sorties you fly, the more you cant create large swings in K/D or K/H. So by the end of the month, if you have a lot of sorties and deaths and time in the sky, its harder to manipulate your score to bring your rank lower with good sorties. The less sorties you fly, the more chance you have of large swings in K/D and K/H that can boost you way up in the rankings, but again, you have to get enough points to get better ranked and that means you have to risk more sorties to get those points to stay in the hunt for top fighter rank. If you play a lot, points are easy, but you have to make sure the rest of the categories can be manipulated enough to lower your rank when you have good sorties. In any case its not about timing of players scores and when they fly. Its about having stats that calculate to the best overall score at the end of the month.
I like this type of scoring because its not dependable necessarily on how much one person flies and how many kills they get, and gives players who don't get to play much a chance to rank high. My only wish is that there was an ENY incentive to fly older planes to avoid the jets and temp easy modes taking over the fighter rank. Or that older planes gave you way more points than tempest or 262s when you land. But unfortunately 262s and temps give you the most points when you land which incentivizes them more to fly the easy modes. That is unfortunate. Overall its a still great ranking system and starting it over every month is great because its long enough to get measurements but short enough to give anyone a chance at being #1 if they really try and stick to it.
