Yeah, I'm looking more for quantitative numbers. Intuitively bigger ships = longer wakes and faster movement = longer wakes, but in the context of a combat model, "how long is it" is the question at point.
I mean for example, here's a picture of a carrier
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rican_navy.jpg
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.image?id=5353
http://apsey.org/ximages/navy_csg.jpg
http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/74.htm (about 2/3 down the page is a good wide angle photo.
So its impossible to tell the true speed of the ships in the photos, but from the looks of it appears that the wakes (given that a carrier is around 1000ft or about 6/10 or a mile long) are extending approximately... 4 - 5 miles behind the ships.
Perhaps some better pictures are in order if anyone has been available. But we've all seen the in-game wakehomers lock onto a ship from 10nm... is it feasible? What game engine aspects control the length of a ship wake anyway?