Hi,
I have a similar situation to @nachtigall (one pump and zones with large water requirements and several zones with rather small water requirements) and I believe that many users have similar problems with a somehow limited water supply.
My approach would be to give each group a total capacity (e.g. 1). Furthermore, each zone is given a water requirement (something between 0 and 1). Zones can now run in parallel until the total capacity is exhausted.
By default, the total capacity = 1 and all water requirements = 1, so the behavior would be the same as it currently is and there is no additional complexity for beginners. However, experienced users can adapt the water requirements of their zones to their circumstances and thus theoretically operate any number of zones in parallel.
In nachtigall’s example, the sprinkler zones would have a demand of 1 and the drip hoses would each have a demand of 0.1 or 0.2.
I’ve already had a first look at the code and think I’m beginning to have an idea of what to do. However, I still have no idea how to add fields in the GUI for a first test environment.
Therefore I would like to present my idea here and look forward to feedback.