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I am not understanding what could possibly be the issue with "flooding the whole system"?
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Simple, the amount of
nutrient solution required to do it. Most people don't have the experience to make there own nutrient concentrates thus they are not as cheep to us. For instance the
broccoli plants I have growing in 4 5 gallon buckets only use a total of 6 gallons of solution. That is plenty to water the plants thoroughly and still have plenty in the reservoir to keep the
pump from running dry. If the system was a flood and drain E/B it would take 20 to 25 gallons to grow the same plants. When you consider changing the
nutrients every 1-2 weeks, over time that adds up to quite an expence for those of us that cant make there own nutrients.
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A E/F system uses only 1 rather big and flat growing container
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An E/F system can be designed many different ways with as many growing containers as you wish and in many different shapes. I had strawberry's growing in 4 short flat containers and peppers growing in 10 small tall 2 litter bottles, both were E/F. I also have one built that uses one 10ft long 4in wide tubing. I can personally come up with many different configurations to do an E/F system, it would just depend on what it was I wanted to grow.
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No "expensive" dripers, no complex inline or outline tubes
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Well that all depends on how you design your system and how large it is. I don't use any dripers, I make my own. Like with my broccoli plants a simple circle of tubing with holes poked in it works just fine, nothing expensive there. As far as the return line I guess it can get complicated with a large number of plants but not for me. Also any time spent figuring it out would save plenty of money in nutrients compared to flooding the same system.