Is this the only way it works? I did the same as the OP and was never able to find the ship I followed
Yes.
Having the wake selected let's the server know you intend to follow whoever left it so it does some extra work to make sure that that ships spawns in your instance when you get there (in the case of players it will put you in the same instance as them).
If you just have the destination selected it doesn't do that work for a number of reasons. You may have scanned multiple wakes so the server would have to decide which you scanned latest (more work) and make sure the ship that left it was waiting for you at the end of the jump.
As well as this you may have decided to just go to the same system as the wake you scanned, whether this is coincidence or it is because you've been watching a player jump to and from a startport carrying gold and you want to find where they're getting from doesn't matter.
If the server did the extra work to make sure the wake leaver is waiting for you at the end of your jump every time you scanned any wakes the server would have to decide if your target system was the same as the wakes, store the name, rank, wanted level and type of ship that left the wake and then make sure you were in the same instance or spawn the same NPC at your destination. This would have to be done every time!
As you can imagine, with the number of players and the fact that we already experience network issues this is a huge and unnecessary burden on the server hence the way the wake scanner works now!
