Pax Autocratica gameplay combines a totalitarian colony simulation with first-person roguelite raids. At home, the player governs citizens, facilities, resources, and troops through laws and decrees. On expeditions, the player enters the action directly, leads soldiers in combat, and ventures outward in search of vital resources. Everything below is confirmed by the official Steam page; anything the page does not document is left out.
The colony side
You start from a handful of survivors and build a self-sufficient state. Citizens are assigned to mining, gathering, hauling, and research; production turns their work into weapons, armor, food, and supplies. Facilities automate essential tasks as the colony grows from a fragile shelter into a state machine.
Citizens carry four values (Fear, Happiness, Hunger, and Loyalty) shaped by your policies. The same population can be governed through fear, propaganda, surveillance, and punishment, or through comfort and prosperity. Pushed too far, dissent becomes riot. Wandering traders and new recruits from the fractured Tyris System feed the colony's expansion.
The expedition side
Expeditions are first-person and roguelite. You lead your battalion into combat that scales from desperate skirmishes to large-scale mechanized warfare: enemy infantry, tanks, and mechs, with elites, bosses, and warlords layering bullets, lasers, missiles, drones, and artillery across the field. Soldiers are an asset to command, or expendable shields for your survival.
Capturing weakened enemies is a core mechanic: prisoners return to your base, where the prison system breaks resistance through fear, indoctrination, execution, or conversion: producing citizens, warnings, or resources for the regime.
The core system
Cores are the roguelite layer collected during each expedition:
- Weapon cores reshape your gun's firing pattern.
- Combo cores create interactions between core series.
- Soldier cores empower the troops beside you, or turn them into sacrifices that keep you alive.
Each run becomes a changing war machine built around you, your troops, and the chaos you release together. Cores belong to the run; extracted resources belong to the colony.
How the two halves connect
Colony and expeditions form one loop, not two modes. The colony's production equips and staffs each expedition; each expedition returns resources and prisoners the colony converts into growth. That loop (build, govern, fight, extract, return) is the confirmed structure of the Early Access build, and it is already complete at launch, alongside multiple soldier types, weapons, buildings, and cores.
For a first playthrough in that loop, read the beginner guide. For what is still planned during the roughly two-year Early Access window (including co-op) read the release-date status page.
What this page does not claim
The Steam page does not document exact core effects, drop rates, expedition routing rules, or balance values, and in Early Access those change patch by patch (Directive AG-14 alone buffed two weapon cores on August 15, 2026). This page stays at the level the official source confirms rather than inventing specifics that the next patch invalidates.
Sources and verification
- Primary source: the official Steam store page: "About This Game" system descriptions, Early Access answers, and patch news.
- Verified Aug 17, 2026.