Phantom Doctrine: Should I try to kill enemy agents when possible, but they are no threat during mission (and capturing them is not an option)?

Question

TLDR: Should I try to kill enemy agents when possible, but they are no threat during mission (and capturing them is not an option)?

Is there any after-mission advantage in killing enemy agent in mission? Does it matter if enemy agent is identified/exposed?

Only thing that comes to my mind would be battle experience.

To be specific, I am in early stages of game and I know that capturing enemy agents is useless for now, since they are automatically questioned and killed without any gain. In mission I completed all objectives. Unidentified agent was on my way to extraction point. I could either kill him or sneak around him (without any problems). I also had mission where killing enemy agent was secondary objective (probably because he was exposed?), but I am not sure if it brings any advantage and how it differs from case where it is not objective.

There seems to be nothing in official manual and I searched steam discussions but there are mostly questions about capturing agents or other in mission details. I also checked Fandom wiki but Agents page says nothing about enemy agents and there is no "Enemy agents" page.

What I am NOT asking is what advantage I have during mission. I know agents can go investigate, destroy documents when they have any suspicion.

Answer 1

Enemy Agents are persistent in the game world. They earn experience and grow in power just as your Agents do, and they run missions to help the AI opponent accomplish its goals. Whenever the AI is doing things like trying to kill your informants or searching for your base, it's using its own roster of Agents to do that. Thus, killing them in the mission does give you one advantage - the Agent is dead and no longer helping the AI defeat you. This slows down the AI's progress for a little while.

Of course, the AI will hire new Agents, just as you do, so the advantage is temporary.

Later on you'll be able to question them more deeply, implant trackers to follow them back to their base, and even brainwash them to turn them into double agents you can use on the battlefield. However, IIRC, even at this early stage the "questioned and then killed" result which you mention means that you get a little new information for your corkboard AND remove the enemy Agent from play. (It's a minor bonus, but it is something.)

But yes, killing them in the field does help you somewhat. I don't think them being exposed or not makes much difference specifically regarding the question of killing them in mission. Agents being exposed is something that hurts them on the strategic map, not the tactical mission map.