How to stop relay stations?

[RyuKajiya]

So when I clear all ground bases and destroy the relay stations a while after that the hive deploys new one. Punching more and more holes in my planet.
So what is the best way to protect a planet from that?
I have seen missle turrets shoot stuff in space so do you just need enough firepower to stop a relay station before it can "land" or does the planetary shield also protect the area it covers from relays?

[Coops]

Planetary shield will work
or
Missile battery (or plasma turrets) set to attack high air will work
or
let them punch a hole and then cap it with a geothermal reactor for free energy.

You can also manually destroy them with corvettes and destroyers, or leave the space drones in orbit while you are on the planet.

[RyuKajiya]

Do missle batteries just shoot it down while approaching or do I need signal towers to extend their reach over the whole planet?

[Coops]

Signal towers will help a great deal.

[CovertGuardian]

How to stop dark fog from invading a planet.
Level of evidence: Bits and pieces from the internet plus some personal testing.

1) Clear all the ground bases by whatever method (you leave the relay for now...)

2) Build a missile battery w missile supply (my standard battery is 31 launchers T1 missiles.
For the default low level hives, this is enough).

3) Add a signal tower at your missile battery and each pole.
Level of evidence:
I use one signal tower at each pole PLUS one every 120 degrees around the equator.
I know this 5-pole + one at the battery pattern works.
Some others have said you can get by with only one at the missile battery plus one
at each pole. I have not verified this personally, but it seems reasonable.
I KNOW that having only the signal tower at the missile battery is NOT
enough (have had a relay make a new base by landing on the "blind side" of the planet where
my signal tower could not "see" it during landing approach).

4) Cap all the ground bases (Geothermal is awesome), so the relays go home.

5) Change the settings on all Missile Bases on the planet to target upper atmosphere.
The hive has a weird honor / morality system - killing an incoming relay is "acceptable" and only
generates a small amount of threat. Killing a ground base is acceptable and only generates
a small amount of threat. Kill a relay while it is still connected to the ground is
"an evil act" in their moral system and generates a lot of threat with the hive.
So to keep them off your planets without triggering space based counter attack, kill the relay on the
way to its landing site, but never while attached...

WARNING: Two gas giant moons are close enough that they will fire missles at relays on the OTHER moon.
So to keep threat low, you need to do steps 4 on both moons and then step 5 on both moons.
Otherwise the missiles on the first moon will kill the relays on the second moon while they are
still ground attached (generating the higher amount of threat...)

If you do the setup on every planet in a system, the hive will expend its
matter building relays that die, without every raising a serious alarm...
Once its matter is exhausted, no new relays...

[nevryn]

Just go look up JD Plays on You-Tube .. you can get a full debrief on all the capabilites of th Dark Fog including how to take down hives and protect planets.

[SKARDAVNELNATE]

I let the relays stay in place. They kept trying to build a base which would immediately get bombarded with missiles. Eventually they ran out of energy and flew off. I don't think the hive had the energy to deploy them again.