Make Your Supply Depots Do Something Useful

Good Terrans Have More than One Wall-In

Many people understand that you need to wall-in your main base, but you can do so much more with the supply depot door mechanic. For example, a good habit to get into is creating a wall of depots where it can be useful for holding off enemy units in the late game. This is especially important in TvZ, where any decent zerg will exploit the lack of defence with a ling run by or infestors. You can use a variety of things to make your wall/defence other than depots, such as barracks and engineering bays; they are particularly good since they are so bulky and cost only 125 minerals. I usually have at least one in my second wall in.

Wall/Door to Natural Expansion

 Wall/Door to Third Base

This is such an effective strategy since it costs literally nothing to have good building placement, the supply depots have the door mechanic for a reason, you may as well use it to it's full potential, it is mostly useful in TvZ and TvP since you can hold off lings, DT's, Infestors' you name it since it's another method for controlling the enemy's movements, the only effective way to have a ling run by now would be exactly where you want them to attack, you effectively limit the other players options at no cost.

Supply Depot Blocking

Supply depots are cheap, and you get the full benefit of a depot regardless of where it is on the map, if you build a depot on the other corner of the map, it has exactly the same mechanical effect as if it was in your main base. You can use this to your advantage, by building depots where the enemy will likely expand. The enemy would have their building cancelled and would need to kill the supply depot with units, since it can not really be killed by a worker.

You get three benefits from this simple strategy:

1. The amount of resources the enemy loses is a good 15-30 second delay of base not being built, this easily pays itself the 100 minerals it costs to build.

2. Supply depots can not really be destroyed by the worker, the enemy player would need to send a small group of units to take out the depot, a split army gives you a good opportunity to attack while there are units out of place.

3. It frustrates the player; If you have ever been on the receiving end to a pylon/supply depot block, you will know how annoying it is to deal with it, it generally disrupts peoples build order when you delay their third base.

Something I found particularly useful was flying the factory in TvP to land where the third base is, and fly it off when it was low in hp- my practice partners complimented as to how annoying it was.

Supply Depot Scouting

Supply depots make for great drop spotters when it comes to extra vision, having depots spread out around likely unit paths a dropship would take, it often gives you a great opportunity to prepare for what's coming, and are unlikely to de destroyed, unless the player wants to use their 'not so secret now' drop to take them out.

All of that extra vision, for something you would build anyway.

Although I sometimes go overboard with building placement, It's incredibly helpful for giving me wins that I would not of otherwise had. In competitive SC2 as we know it, building placement is relatively young compared to the potential that Terran has with their buildings. I recommend you catch on to the trend early and start incorporating some of these strategies to your building placement.