Prisoners and Conversion
Pax Autocratica prisoner mechanics: capture weakened enemies, drag them back to base, and break them through fear, indoctrination, execution or conversion.
Prisoners are the mechanic that makes Pax Autocratica’s two halves into one game. Without them, the shooter and the colony sim would be separate activities sharing a menu. With them, every firefight is a recruitment opportunity.
Capture
Section titled “Capture”Multiverse’s confirmed description: weakened foes can be captured and dragged back to your base.
Two design consequences follow from that wording. Enemies must be brought down rather than killed, so lethality becomes a choice — over-killing a target destroys a resource. And they are dragged, physically transported home rather than teleported, which implies extraction is part of the fight.
What is not published: the input or ability used to capture, the health state required, how many prisoners can be carried at once, whether troops can carry them for you, and whether a run can fail in a way that loses captives.
The Four Options
Section titled “The Four Options”Once a prisoner is behind prison doors, Multiverse names four ways resistance can be crushed:
| Method | Confirmed description |
|---|---|
| Fear | Breaking resistance through intimidation |
| Indoctrination | Ideological conversion over coercion |
| Execution | Killing the prisoner |
| Conversion | Turning the enemy into a believer |
These are presented as a set of tools. No cost, duration, success rate or prerequisite has been published for any of them.
The Three Outcomes
Section titled “The Three Outcomes”The official phrasing is that this continues until an enemy becomes one of three things:
A citizen. The prisoner joins your colony and can presumably be assigned to the same jobs as anyone else — mining, gathering, hauling, research, manufacturing.
A warning to would-be rebels. This is the most interesting confirmed outcome, because it connects the prison directly to general population control. It implies prisoner handling is visible to your citizens and affects their behaviour. It is the only stated link between the prison and colony-wide unrest — see rebellions.
Another tool of the regime. Deliberately vague in the source, and this wiki will not guess at what it means. Multiverse has not elaborated.
Why This Changes How You Fight
Section titled “Why This Changes How You Fight”Consider what the loop implies. Your colony needs population. Expeditions into the Tyris System exist partly to conscript new citizens. And battles produce capturable enemies.
So combat is not purely an obstacle between you and resources — it is a source of labour. A run that kills everything efficiently and a run that subdues and extracts enemies produce different colonies afterwards.
The satire is doing real mechanical work here too: the game makes population growth and moral compromise the same action.
What Is Not Known
Section titled “What Is Not Known”No numbers exist for any of this. Specifically unpublished: conversion success rates, how long conversion takes, whether converted citizens behave differently from native ones, whether they can rebel more easily, prison capacity, whether prisoners can escape, whether execution provides a resource, and how strongly the “warning” outcome affects unrest.
Any guide stating a conversion percentage or a prison building count is inventing it.
Verify It Yourself
Section titled “Verify It Yourself”Prisoner capture and conversion is part of the core loop present in the free Prologue, available since December 2025 at no cost.
Worth checking while you play, since none of it is documented: whether prisoners are worth the extraction risk, whether converted citizens are as productive as conscripted ones, and whether the deterrence outcome is observable in citizen mood.
Remember that Multiverse states Prologue balance may change before Early Access, and that mechs and late-game mechanics are absent from it — so late-game prisoner handling at full battle scale may differ. See Prologue vs Early Access.
Prisoners and Conversion FAQ
Section titled “Prisoners and Conversion FAQ”How does prisoner capture work in Pax Autocratica?
Enemies weakened in battle can be captured and dragged back to your base. Multiverse has not published the exact input, health threshold or carry mechanics involved.
What can you do with prisoners in Pax Autocratica?
Four options are named: fear, indoctrination, execution and conversion. The outcomes described are an enemy becoming a citizen, a warning to would-be rebels, or another tool of the regime.
Can enemies become citizens in Pax Autocratica?
Yes. Conversion is confirmed as an outcome where an enemy becomes a citizen of your colony. No conversion rate, time cost or failure chance has been published.
Is prisoner conversion in the free Prologue?
Yes. Prisoner capture and conversion is part of the core loop present in the Prologue, which has been free on Steam since December 1, 2025.
Sources
Section titled “Sources”Last updated: July 27, 2026 · Fan-made, unofficial · Not affiliated with Multiverse · Unconfirmed details are labelled, never invented.