Stealth or objective oriented?

In the "Unsunctioned raid White Fish", I noticed that I can finish with the optional objective only if I initiate the combat by killing the 3 soldiers guarding the final intel.

Does the game award more XP points by going full stealth (in that case, not getting the final intel) or finishing all the objectives, no matter what (non stealth approach in this case)?

Solution 1:

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's not actually impossible, but the most reliable method needs some careful preparation and at least one operative that speaks the local language so you have the "distract" option available.

No matter how you choose to proceed, I recommend making sure you've taken out all other opposition (and maybe the civilians too to cut down on risk of accidentally getting stumbled onto), and then moving all your agents into position at or near the room.

The tactic that's always available is to sneak one agent into the room to act as spotter, then station your other agents by the doors and initiate a breach. This has a decent chance of working, and even if it doesn't, the survivors will be badly injured and the combat will be over pretty quickly.

The problem with stealthing it is that all three of them are looking at each other, so killing one will initiate combat. However, if you pay careful attention to their FOVs, you will notice that one of them is only in one other's FOV.

Let's call our targets Alpha, Charlie and Baker for ease of planning, and your language-speaking operative will be 'Echo'.

Now, the room is set up so that Alpha has sight of Charlie and Baker, Baker has sight on Alpha and Charlie, and Charlie has sight on Alpha.

Move the team (other than Echo) into position as close to Baker as they can get while staying out of the FoV cones. Ideally, you want at least three people at less than one move point away from melee range on Baker, Charlie and Alpha. If you've already augmented an agent to have sufficient stats for more than one Action Point, that's even better, but I think it's too early in the game for that.

Move Echo into position next to the door into the room just behind Alpha, and open the door.

Now, the nice thing about Distract is that it doesn't require the target to have a line of sight to you, as long as you have line of sight to the target. That's what we'll be exploiting here.

When everyone's into position, do the following in this exact sequence:

1. Echo uses Distract on Alpha, who turns around to see who called. Alpha can't see Echo because Echo is standing next to the doorway on the outside. Baker is now unguarded.
2. An agent moves in and incapacitates Baker. Baker is down. Charlie is now unguarded.
3. Your second agent moves in and incapacitates Charlie. Charlie is down. Alpha is now unguarded.
4. Your fourth agent moves in and incapacitates Alpha. All three targets are now down, and stealth remains intact.
5. Dispose of the bodies as you like, recover the intel, and head to extraction at your leisure.

That's the quick blitz method. If you don't have enough agents or aren't quite sure of your ability to pull that coordination off, here's the slow-but-safe way:

1. Echo distracts Alpha. Alpha turns around, leaving Baker unguarded.
2. One agent incapacitates Baker, then moves back out of sight.
3. Another agent disposes of the body before Alpha can turn back around and likewise moves back out of sight.
4. Several turns pass while Distract cools down. Alpha and Charlie are soldiers, not Agents, so they don't start patrolling when people stop reporting in, and ignore the fact that Baker seems to have stepped out for coffee.
5. Echo distracts Alpha again. Alpha turns around again, leaving Charlie uncovered.
6. One agent incapacitates Charlie.
7. The other agents incapacitates Alpha. Dispose, grab intel, evac, mission accomplished.

I'm afraid I don't have an answer to the second part of your question. I will note that you get only half XP for stealth kills as opposed to kills made during combat, but in my opinion the absence of risk and time pressure more than make up for that. It's not as if there are finite missions, and a perfect-stealth mission means that none of your agents were injured or uncovered, so they're ready for another right away.