So for some reason, I can’t pinpoint what causes this bug, but it seems like the quest log activity that normally appears when you board a hostile ship is no longer appearing, and that may be correlated with the fact that these ships somehow have no crew. Like, at all. No pirate crew, no captain, just an abandoned ship.
I’m concerned this could be a prelude to worse bugs, and others have seemingly experienced this bug, but also been unable to pinpoint the cause.
All I know is, most of what I’ve done prior to the bug becoming evident involved completing the quests “Exorcism” and “Peacemaker”, surveying several planets, and doing this with Sarah Morgan as my companion.
Update: it seems to have happened again, but this time I noticed something. Both this incident and the last incident were preceded partially by a period of surveying a planet with life, with a companion by my side (Barrett, this time).
I may have even been on a surveying quest the first time, and a genetic sampling quest for the second.
So the common thread seems to be that this bug is somehow correlated with surveying a planet and/or combat involving alien wildlife.