Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Split the "Unfulfilled requests" tooltip into three categories (Incoming, Waiting for Bots, and Missing from Network) so players can instantly diagnose logistics bottlenecks.

What?

I suggest splitting or categorizing the items listed in the "Unfulfilled requests" tooltip into three distinct groups based on their actual fulfillment status:

• Actively Incoming: Items that are currently in the network and have robots dispatched to deliver them to you.
• Pending Bots: Items that exist in the logistics network, but are waiting because there are currently no available logistics bots to carry them.
• Unavailable: Items that will never be filled because the logistics network currently has zero in storage/providers.

Why?

As you can see in the screenshot below, the current tooltip just gives a monolithic list of everything you are missing. When a player has a massive request list, it is impossible to tell at a glance why a request is unfulfilled.
By categorizing these, players can immediately diagnose their factory's bottlenecks without having to open the logistics network window and manually search for each item. You will instantly know if you just need to wait (incoming), if you need to insert more robots into the roboports (pending bots), or if you need to ramp up production of a specific item (unavailable).

How?

This could be implemented mechanically in a few ways without cluttering the UI:

• Divided Tooltip: Break the tooltip into three sub-headers (e.g., "En Route", "Waiting for Bots", "Missing Items").
• Color-coded text: Keep the single list, but change the text color of the numbers underneath the item icons. For example: White for actively incoming, Yellow for waiting on bots, and Red for missing from the network entirely.

P.S. Why this needs to be a vanilla UI update (Not a mod):

Anticipating the "there's probably a mod for this" response—this specifically needs to be a base game change. TMK, the Factorio modding API does not provide hooks to modify or inject custom formatting into native engine tooltips. While a mod could theoretically create an entirely separate, custom UI window to display logistics statuses, it cannot alter the existing vanilla "Unfulfilled requests" tooltip to add sub-headers or color-code the text. To keep the at-a-glance UI clean, this has to be handled engine-side.


So much love — Thanks!

Agreed. Very useful when bot network is under high demand