What are the strategies to getting past a stationary guard that is watching the door?

Question

So in my last game, the teleporter room's door was watched by stationary guard. The door itself from my side has squares on left and right of it blocked. So when I open the door I:

• Immediately visible, and
• Cannot hide after being seen

Given that this was the teleporter room I solved that by getting one agent KOed which lured the guard out, and then ambushing the guard with another agent. The agent that remained up then dragged the KOed agent to the teleporter.

Questions:

• Are there a way to get past these without getting KOed? For teleporter room getting KOed works because you are almost done, but if this is a starting room you might need to think of something else. What would that be?
• What are the penalties for leaving an agent behind? That is if I do not drag it to the teleporter?
• Is guard placement mostly random, to the point where you really can have a guard watching the single starting room door all the time? I have not seen this so maybe the game makes sure to only do this when being KOed is a viable option?

Answer 1

The door itself from my side has squares on left and right of it blocked. So when I open the door I:

• Immediately visible, and
• Cannot hide after being seen

OK, well you could of opened the door - letting the guard see you, become alerted and go into overwatch - then close the door. This will safely break the line of sight so the agent doeso not get shot and let the agent move away. This will also draw the guard to move through the door to hunt the agent, be warned that it is possible they might kick that door down (breaking it forever) so do not stand behind it.

Another option for getting the guard to move would be to make an agent run as close as possible to the guard, possibly making him move to investigate the sound. A similar approach would be to use the ping Incognita program to create a sound. If you can evade this guard without KO'ing them they would eventually return to their original location, non-alerted.

What are the penalties for leaving an agent behind? That is if I do not drag it to the teleporter?

Any KO'ed agent left behind is considered MIA and is lost for the remainder of that game, the equipment they were carrying is lost with them. If you cannot revive an agent, you can drag them to the exit (it which case they will be ready as normal for the next mission) or take their equipment.

I think it might (might ^(possibly)) be possible to rescue that specific agent from a later detention centre mission, but I've never had the opportunity to test this.

Is guard placement mostly random...

I understand it's very random, it's quite possible to get situations where it's not possible to pass undetected.

Note that the higher difficultly settings enable guard patrol routes that pass through multiple rooms and routes that can enter the starting room - so having a guard stood somewhere awkward is not the most dangerous behaviour to watch out for.