Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When spoilable items are on a belt, it is really hard to tell how spoiled they are, and there's no way at all to see the exact remaining spoil time. There should be.

What?

When spoilable items are in a chest or machine, by clicking on the chest or machine to open its configuration window, you can easily see the items' approximate spoilage progress at a glance via the shrinking of the little bar on the stack icon, and if you mouse over one, you get an info panel that has details including the current spoil percentage (to a couple decimal places) and the time remaining until spoilage.

When dealing with items on belts, however, all you have is a little progress bar showing the spoilage progress. The problem is, these bars are very hard to read. They are tiny, have poor contrast between the 'used' and 'remaining' parts of the bar, have no border or outline so they bleed into each other, and are often covered up by other sprites, especially if the belts are stacked. What's more, there is, AFAICT, no way at all to get the info panel that shows the exact spoil percentage and time remaining.

As for how to fix this, I don't know; UI design is not my field. One idea I had is that belt segments also have a configuration window that can be opened by clicking on them, which is used to e.g. configure circuit network conditions if a wire is connected, but unlike chests and machines, items atop the belt segment are not displayed in this window. Well, what if it they were? The belt segment's config window could have pseudo-slots which show the items on that belt segment. These pseudo-slots would not be interactable, but could be moused over to see the item's detailed info card. If the items on the belt are stacked, each stack is shown in a single pseudo-slot with the stack size as the item count; additionally, identical non-spoilable items would be merged and the total number of them shown in a single slot. Thus the maximum number of slots would be 8.

Why?

'How old is that pentapod egg sitting there at the end of that belt? Is it in danger of hatching? What about this line supplying bioflux; how much freshness am I losing between where it is made and where I use it for science? This build is having trouble with poor freshness; is the problem in my belting or in my inserter setup?'

when the packed items are moving east west on a belt yeah, the bar can look full white even though there is some spoilage. When it is nearly dead, you see mostly gray bar. Assuming all the items have the same age.

I think it is less of an issue north to south

evanrinehart wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2026 7:17 am when the packed items are moving east west on a belt yeah, the bar can look full white even though there is some spoilage. When it is nearly dead, you see mostly gray bar. Assuming all the items have the same age.

I think it is less of an issue north to south

With east/west belts, the main problem is the bars merging into each other. If the belt is stationary, and you have the 'disable zoom limits' debug option on, you can zoom in and look closely, but that's an annoying amount of work to figure out something that should be obvious at a glance. Additionally, such belts are often partially or totally obscured by buildings immediately south of them.

With north/south belts, the main issue is the bars being covered up by other items on the belt, especially if its a stacked belt. On a stationary belt, if you zoom in, you can see the bar for whatever item is southernmost, but trying to see the rest is an exercise in frustration.

In both cases, a moving belt offers no good solution no matter how close you zoom, nor is there any way to get an exact measure.