@fl4nn Okaaay, I managed to fix the lens yesterday and it's back in working order.
The process was not quite as bad as I expected it to be, sure it was fiddly but certainly not even close to the worst things I've worked on. It took me a good number of hours since I took my time given this is my first camera lens repair.

Since the original cable was still in good shape I decided to reuse it because A: it has black paint to minimize light scattering inside the lens and B: I don't have much trust in the adhesive on the replacement cable not failing in a year or two.
THANKFULLY the barrel is metal so I used acetone to dissolve the old adhesive, had it been plastic it would have been a real pain in the ass.

I admit I went overkill on the repair, and I had to redo it once since I messed up the glue application the first time. what I did was the following: I applied strong double-sided tape to hold down the flat flex cable, applied a small amount of superglue to the edges of the flat flex to reinforce it all and some carefully cut kapton tape over that to hold the cable down while the (old) super glue dried and act as further reinforcement. I tested the mechanism and the kapton tape is thin enough to not interfere with any parts of the lens.

If you happen to have a nikon af-s 18-200mm lens like this one, you have the same problem and want to try to repair it yourself, here are two videos showing you how to take the lens apart and put it back together:
Part1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PuEnKQyc2I
Part2:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=higNs6EQ6L8