1. On centrally-hosted games: Can I host my OWN server? Or must I use Scirra's central server? Is it better to just use Scirra's or would using your own probably be faster?
Scirra provides a Signalling Server. This is different than a Host Server for your game. The Host Server is people would generally think of as "server" as opposed to "client".
A Signalling Server is sort of like a directory service Scirra provides, that can point people to the IP of your game's Host Server, or in the case of a peer-hosted game, it would get the IP of the first peer to join and return that IP as the host to subsequent peers.
2. On peer-hosted games: any finished games use this? Is it like TCP/IP? Is it fairly reliable?
Packet transmission is handled by UDP. Most games want this. There is also the option to handle packets in ordered and unordered reliable modes, simulating TCP.
Read more about reliability modes here - https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/892/mu ... e-10#h2a24
3. How feasible are these things to implement for someone without professional training in programming? I'm pretty thrifty with the C2 scripting system, for the most part, but mutliplayer seems like it must be tough to implement.
Very feasable. Construct is awesome like that and provides the means for an amateur to put together a multiplayer game. While possible, it definitely isn't easy! Expect to put in considerable extra effort, depending on the complexity of your game.
For example, anyone can follow the tutorials and make a chat room or pong. How you implement those techniques into your own game is the challenge, but the building blocks are there.
4. Slightly tangential question: It seems possible to have 4 different gamepads hooked up to the computer and use them all in local multiplayer, right? I know C2 has gamepad support, but does it have reliable multiple gamepad support?
The section you quoted from the manual seems pretty clear and concise to me, although I haven't used the gamepad object myself. Just use the gamepad parameter in expressions to control the objects in the game - for example gamepad 0 will move player 0's sprite, gamepad 1 will move player 1's sprite and so on.
Can't comment on reliability there - regardless of your code I think the bigger issue is that there will ALWAYS be hardware issues and bugs out there somewhere on one of the million system configurations in the wild, and you really don't have much control over those.
I always have trouble getting my DS3 controllers to get recognized by windows through an xinput wrapper, but that doesn't have anything to do with the game I'm trying to get them to work with!