Instead of matching the status text string to determine the state, use the icons, such as their colour and their shape.
Frequently used nodes could be selected from a list in the config UI and queue will know how to detect the status based on the text status messages from those nodes.
Some outbound nodes use stateless protocols such as UDP. In these instances, there is no connection state. Some nodes, like influxdb out generate catch messages when an error occurs storing data in the influxdb instance. Queue could catch these errors, and store them in a queue, and retry them later.