Is a POS necessary for Indy work?

You can succeed without a POS, especially once your BPOs are up to scratch with their research as NPC build costs won't come to much more than the fuel costs for a POS. However the POS will help huge amounts with research and also make it easier to make copies of your best BPOs to sell which will help with fuel costs.

Yes you can see if slots are available in an NPC station without having to fly there.

I am at work at the moment so can't source the screens directly so please bear with me.

Open up your Science and Industry window

Find the tab that lists available slots - I believe it is labeled Installations

Select Material Research (or whichever you require) in the dropdown labelled Activity

Select Region for range

Sort your list by when available

Click down the list of stations to see if there are available slots

For raising a POS, the critical factor is your corporation's standing to the faction that controls the region you want to raise the POS in. Your corp's standing needs to be ten times the security rating of the system you want to raise the POS in, eg. standing of 5 for a 0.5 security system, 8.0 for a 0.8 sec system, etc. If this isn't high enough then it can be a slog getting it up there.

Once you have the standings, raising the POS is fairly simple matter.

Depends how much ISK you have.

if it is just you or you and a friend a small - medium tower in Low-sec is all you really need.

All this Hi-sec POS is very nice, but in all honesty, if you can find a quiet 0.3 system with a station there is very little to fear. If you have no war dec on you then anyone who attacks your POS will get a standings hit, if you pick a barren moon and be unassuming couple of research labs, try to make it look unimportant no one will attack it. Mines been in low sec for months and not been attacked once.

I used to take it down once a week and move it to another moon/ system. Being a small POS the whole set up is mins rather than hours and the fuel isn't too bad... Just don't put the BPO's in the POS (do your copy jobs etc via station remote) and all you have to lose is a couple of hundred million in ISK if someone does do the unthinkable and re-enforce it.

A couple of Hundred million may be a lot to you, so may not be an acceptable risk, but look at it like this, what do you get from being in Hi-sec over (high low-sec?)

You can't be attacked right... well if you are war-decced then they can still attack your POS in highsec anyhow.

Concord will protect you.... well concord will protect you, but if the war dec is on again, no they won't so sure it will reduce chances of chancers but not going to be protecting you. It won't stop a Hi-Sec Gank either, I remember some time ago a titan BPO going down in a Research POS in hi-sec, because the idiot let slip A) he had it, and B) he forgot to put strontium in teh POS.

There are no Capitals in Hi-sec. This one is true and it's also true that to take down a POS in hi-sec requires a lot of co-ordination and losses.

This in account even though I can anchor in a 0.4 or 0.5 myself I still stick with my 0.3 system, if I want to build a ship I go anchor my ship yard build it and then unanchor it, my POS is just for me and a friend and so we maintain it as such.

Good luck no matter which route you decide.

For invention you'll need lots of copies. You can get those either from waiting a long queue on empire labs, or by asking friends to make those copies for you.

It works a lot better if you have friends having access to POS labs in their alliances/corporations.