Hey, primarily wondering if I've missed something obvious, but I'm not sure where to look seeing as I thought I had a handle on this, but as evidenced by a recent battle, I don't.

When engaging in a Space Battle, is there a limiter to how many "lanes" one of your flotillas is able to engage? I thought that it worked where any of your flotillas in a given "lane" could engage the lane directly across, and any "adjacent" lane to it.

A --- D

B --- E

C --- F

Thus Flotilla A can engage enemy Flotillas D and E, however assuming you have dispatched them with Flotilla F remaining, you're out of luck and have to hopefully rely on the flanking bonus for having more flotillas in the fight. This is how I thought combat worked, where it follows that B can engage all three enemy flotillas, however my most recent game saw a battle where my ships were stronger in nearly every respect, both in offence and defense, and I was favoured to win the engagement by the battle wheel thing. The battle was set up like the following

A --- D (three missle/buff ships vs. single ship likely buffer)

B --- E (3 battleships supported by 6 corvettes all using kinetic/railgun/boarding weapons vs. single ship likley buffer)

   --- F (empty lane vs. his remaining fleet. 

I started outflanked, but my enemy's D and E fleets were single ships... they were dispatched in the very first volley or two. I went from a flanking disadvantage to gaining the advantage. Two things happened after this however, the first being that my enemy did not seem to lose his flanking advantage he had walked into the fight with, and simoultaneously my B flotilla refused to engage his F flotilla. Each of us had put 90% of our ships in these respective fleets, so I watched his ships take the entire battle whittling down my ships that should have chewed his up, while my crews apparently decided to just take it. 

No clue what happened, hopefully someone can help me out. Is there an aspect of battle that I've forgotten or missed entirely? 

Firing arcs happened. Top mounted weapons have 270° firing arc and broadside weapons 120°. In that particular range intentions setup flotilla F moved behind the back of flotilla B, where B couldn't fire back.

You can do two things about it

a) never leave 3rd lane unchecked

b) have squadrons who will still be able to attack bottom lane in the the last phase if they succeed to clear top and middle lanes in time.