Science & Industry

Basic Skills: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1145497#post1145497

An entrance to the rabbit hole: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1591859#post1591859

Take a look at my POS setup for example.

If you have question about POS that I've not answered, or you cant find the answer to, let me know, or send me an eve-mail.

Good advice so far. Pay close attention to what Tau Cabalander has to say; it's valuable insight. My thoughts at this point are:

1) Don't do a small tower unless you're in the middle of nowhere, and don't talk smack in Local, Help, or other forums with the corpies that use/run the tower. There are more than a few corps who prove the size of their ePeen by dec'ing corps with small towers just to pop them. I don't know, maybe it's a killmail thing, maybe it's a boredom thing, maybe it's a chicken-sh!t thing (too scared to live/thrive in low/null).
2) Use Medium or Large towers; medium can be torn down in short order in the event of a wardec, and a large d!ckstar is just too much trouble for most to bother with.
3) As already mentioned, have the skills in place. If you plan to defend the tower, make sure you have toons or corpies with Starbase Def Mgmt to at least L4
4) Can't state this firmly enough: have your plan in order FIRST. How are you going to refuel it (out of pocket costs vs ice mining & PI for your fuel needs), what structures will you put up and how often will you have them running/full? Have you identifed the markets your good will be sold at, and optimized skills for the corp toons to absolutely minimize waste?

If you're not in a rush to get the tower up, build up fuels long enough to keep you running while you get your market set up. Run L4/L4 missions for a few days, and dump that LP into charters (if you're in high). If part of your plan is to make copies and sell them, make sure you get those pieces of the puzzle worked out first. Don't buy that Raven BPO solely to set up a tower and start cranking out copies; you'll quickly notice your plan falling apart mercilessly.

By the way, check out MyPOS (Google it). The fuel part of it isn't up to date with fuel blocks, but it'll give you a good idea of what's involved with the setups you're thinking about (my like EFT does for ship fits, this is for POS fits).