Surviving Mars
80 Achievements
1,750
0-2.5h
Because we Care
Play as Europe and research 5 Breakthrough Technologies before Sol 100
25
9.75%
How to unlock the Because we Care achievement in Surviving Mars - Definitive Guide
Breakthroughs are discovered by analyzing anomalies that are revealed by scanning sectors; they have the magnifying glass icon. Upon finishing a sector scan and revealing a breakthrough anomaly, send an RC Explorer out to analyse it; Europe, by default, sends one in the initial rocket.
Sensor Towers help with sector scan speed; while the closer a tower is to a sector the more benefit it conveys, distant towers still give a +10% scan increase. It can be useful to have five or six towers around wherever you start. Alternatively, you could send a large number of probes in rocket shipments to scan for you. Note that some anomalies only show up once you’ve unlocked Deep Scanning, so Astrogeologist might be a preferable Commander Profile.
Once a breakthrough has been analyzed, it will need to be researched in the Research screen. Breakthroughs have their own tree at the bottom of the menu. Building Research Labs within your Domes can help speed this process, but a couple of other options are available.
Two early techs to Research are Explorer AI and Earth Mars Initiative, which give a +100 Research per Sol benefit to your RC Explorers and Sponser, respectively. Tech order is randomized when the map is selected, but these usually pop up within the first three techs of their respective trees. Explorer AI is found under Robotics, and the Iniative is found under Social.
Europe also grants funding whenever a new tech is researched, so it can be useful to outsource research during the first few Sols to help bootstrap the colony, or to help research a breakthrough once it has been analyzed. Exporting rare metal will also generate funding, so building a dome near to a rare metal deposit can eventually be profitable enough to help fund research.
Using some of the above ideas should result in earning the achievement well within the 100 Sol period.
You can get a leg up by choosing one of the commanders that start with a breakthrough, like the Inventor which starts with autonomous drone hubs. I can personally confirm this starting breakthrough counts toward the five.
Build several research buildings & staff them. (and do anything else to boost your research per Sol - exploration rovers, some events boost sponsor research, outsourcing as much as you can afford, some mods help out, etc)
Then, have multiple sectors being scanned (remember you can queue up to 9 at once) while having a rover or two research new anomalies that show up (the Rover Command AI research helps a lot since it unlocks their auto-explore mode).
Make Breakthrough research a top priority, and then wait.
Event-specific breakthroughs (such as the one for the cancer cure event) count for this achievement as well, and since they tend to be cheaper than normal ones it's good to research those first.
Pick Europe as your mission sponsor when starting a new game. Somewhat similar to playing as the USA, call for a RC Explorer through resupplies after you’ve set up your initial dome and start analysing Anomalies that are revealed on the map through scanning. Anomalies with the “Key” symbol are the ones that will have a chance of granting Breakthrough Technologies, so you need to be diligent in managing your RC Explorer and then setting up a couple of Research Labs to research 5 Breakthrough Technologies. Europe grants funding for each completed technology research, so make sure of that to call for resupplies or outsource research.