I don't think K/T should be weighed any less that K/D and K/S. I haven't even checked my fighter score in a while (in fact.. I'll do that now!).
Ok, now that I've checked scores, I'll compare em.
My stats: K/D 5.25, K/S 3.18, K/T 10.62, hit% 11.3
Total Sorties: 33, Landed 13, Bailed 2, Ditch 1, 17 deaths
Your stats: K/D 8.08, K/S 1.86, K/T 4.75, hit% 14.2
Total Sorties: 52, Landed 41, Bailed 2, 9 Deaths.
OK, we see here that your K/D is 50% (roughly) higher, my K/S is about 50% higher, my K/T is a bit more than 100% higher, your hit% is 30% higher or so.
You've got about 16,000 points, I've got 9,000 or so. I've flown a little bit less than half your hours (in fighters).
I'm ranked 64, you are ranked 136.
Now... why are the ranks the way they are? Remember that all the categories are weighted equally, so nothing is more important than anything else. The best way to get a good fighter score is to kill fast, kill a lot, and shoot straight.
They also give you a handy little thing so you can keep track of how you are doing against other people in individual categories.
So, we'll go through these category by category. My K/D of 5.25 is quite a bit higher than most people in the MA can manage, so I've got a good rank in that one. I'm ranked 69th in K/D. Yours, at 8.08, is even BETTER than mine... but since both of ours is so much better than the average, it doesn't really have that large of an effect. You are ranked 26th overall. So, in K/D you are 43 places ahead of me.
My K/S of 3.18 is, again, a lot better than most people in the MA can manage. So I'm ranked 27th overall in that category. Your K/S is a very respectable 1.86. Good for a ranking of 169th. As you can see, the K/S category is quite a bit more competitive than the K/D category is. A difference of only 1.32 planes per sortie resulted in me gaining back 142 spots on you. As opposed to a 2.83 difference in K/D only resulting in a 43 place spread.
My K/T is 10.62. While good, it isnt stellar (partly because as Leviathn explained- the shorter the flight TO the furball, the better the K/T.. and I tend to gain some alt before I go in. Once I get 'stuck in' I can probably get 1-2 kills a minute, depending on how rich the environment is). It is good for a ranking of 81 overall. 10.62 kills per hour is just about 1 kill every 6 minutes. Your K/T is 4.75. No offense intended, but that is absolutely abysmal if you are going for overall rank. That will take what would otherwise be a sub-100 fighter rank and drop it like a rock. Again, you can get a sense of how much more competitive the K/T category is than the K/D category- not to many people in the MA can kill very fast, so if you can, you can really get good fighter rank even with otherwise 'average' stats. Anyway, a K/T of 4.75 is good for a rank of 983 in that category. You are still probably in the top 25% of the MA population as far as K/T goes (at least I think there are at least 4,000 people playing this game by now), but it is definately the weakest area. Your K/T works about to about one kill every twelve and a half minutes.
Lastly, there is points. And to be honest, yes, points is the 'great equalizer'. You can take someone who has one AWESOME sortie... landing 18 kills in 45 seconds, and he'll still have a crappy overall fighter rank if he only flies that one sortie in a month. However, I think that is how it should be. The points category gives you a way to distinguish a pilot that is GOOD from a pilot that is LUCKY. It is much much harder to maintain good stats over an extended period of time than it is to have 1 or 2 lucky sorties. Anyway, niether of us are particularly competitive in the points category, me placing 623rd overall with 9,200 points, and you placing 271st with 16,700.
To clarify an earlier point.. once you get in the 'top' of a certain category, it ceases to mean a whole lot as a good way to 'boost' your score against your competitors. If out of 100 people Leviathn places 1st in the K/T category with 20 kills per hour, and I finish 2nd with 10 kills per hour, but 3rd place is 1 kill an hour- I've got a lot of 'wiggle room' as far as K/T goes. I'm going to keep 2nd place unless I go on a super MA tour where I fly at 75,000 feet and never fight for the rest of the month. The same thing happens with K/D and K/S. There is like a 'ceiling' (or a floor, maybe) where once you get above it, it really doesn't MATTER what the individual stat is. I'd say probably if you can get above a 4/1 K/D you will be in the top 100 for the tour (in that category). A K/S of maybe 2.25 would be good for the top 100 (I think, that one might be a little off though). Likewise, a K/T of 8.5 to 9.0 will get you in the top 125 (or maybe 150). From there the only thing you need to do is fly more and kill more stuff to get points.
That is why even though there is a HUGE disparity in our K/D, our rank really isnt all that different in that category- both of us are above that 'ceiling'. However, my K/S and K/T are also above the ceiling, and yours aren't yet.
