So I'm playing through the side missions and at the point in this quest where it tells you to follow walt's ship and destroy him, I cannot find walt's ship. I fly around all around the sector the mission is in, check the starmap map for any indicators, look at every single ship in the vicinity, and there's nothing. It appears that walt's ship does not spawn. I can't even forfeit the mission by leaving the area, so can't save progress after having accepted the mission either.

I'm no stranger to modding and it looks pretty easy to do with this game, so if anyone could direct me to what script is breaking this mission and what to fix in it, or what I might need to do with my savegame file to simply bypass the mission as completed, help would be appreciated.

I've searched about it and it appears to be a known bug, but I saw no solution offered.