Starcraft – How to remember to build Supply Depots all game

starcraft-2

What tricks and tips have you employed to keep building Supply Depots all game? I've tried keeping one SCV idle to remember, but I keep getting supply locked.

Best Answer

Develop a mental checklist.

Day[9] has an excellent video focused on encouraging you to keep thinking about a small series of specific tasks or thoughts throughout the entirety of the game. When you start off, your mental checklist should probably be limited to about 4 main things:

  1. Are my resources high?
  2. Am I about to be supply blocked?
  3. Am I building things that help towards my overall strategy?
  4. Is there stuff happening on my mini-map?

Because of the way that the HUD is arranged, this means that ideally your eyes should constantly be darting back and forth between the top right and bottom left corners of the screen.

So to address your specific problem of being supply blocked consistently, you should create a mental trigger that associates a common task with checking your supply, so that every time you perform that task you don't even have to think before your eyes dart to the end of the screen. In this context, the action that makes the most sense to associate with being supply blocked is making a unit. In other words, everytime you make a unit, check your supply count.

It'll be difficult to get used to and you'll still slip up occasionally, but if you keep on trying to remember this, eventually you'll develop the habits necessary to keep on checking your supply count and thereby remembering to get that supply depot up on time.

Also keep in mind that as you expand and make more production facilities, your supply will go up faster, so while a single SCV producing depots will work for one base, eventually you'll need to keep two SCVs making depots in order to keep up with your supply as you expand.