A few questions...

[Drakon]

So you have to get this game by ordering it? Not in stores?

And, I've only got the demo, and I can't find this stuff in the manual. Found a few things out for myself, but some is still left to wonder... Pretty much all stuff about starship engineering window.

What does the plasma drive do?
If you turn power off to everything under a reactor but weapons, will they become more powerful or charge faster? What about shields, too?
What are probes for and how to you use them after they've been launched?
What does the override button do?

How did my destroyer boost up to a speed of 1.2M and end up 23M away from the main area of my sector after minimizing about a minute? (It takes a few minutes just to get to 500 speed) A quantum jump fixed this, but...

[John DiCamillo]

So you have to get this game by ordering it? Not in stores?

Correct.

What does the plasma drive do?
If you turn power off to everything under a reactor but weapons, will they become more powerful or charge faster? What about shields, too?
What does the override button do?

The plasma drive is your ship's main engine. It makes you go forward.

The engineering system uses an automatic load balancing system for distributing power to the various systems that are connected to a power source (reactor or battery). If you have too many systems attached to a single reactor, there will not be enough power to go around and they will "brown out". Shields in particular consume a huge amount of power at 100%, and you will notice that your weapons recharge much more slowly if you have shields at maximum.

You cannot make weapons more powerful just by disabling other systems or rerouting power. You can press the override button to set the the current system's power intake to 120%, which will give you a temporary increase in output. For weapons, this just means that they will recharge faster, not produce more damage on impact.

Note that the override button is bugged in the demo. The EMCON system will force all systems back to 100% periodically. This is corrected in the current retail release 4.0.2.

What are probes for and how to you use them after they've been launched?

Probes are simply torpedoes that have a sensor package instead of a warhead. They automatically scan for contacts as they move through space and report them back to your ship. Contacts discovered by a probe are automatically displayed on your HUD and MFDs, but only for as long as the probe can detect them. Once the probe expires or passes beyond sensor range of the contact, they will disappear again.

How did my destroyer boost up to a speed of 1.2M and end up 23M away from the main area of my sector after minimizing about a minute? (It takes a few minutes just to get to 500 speed)

If I remember correctly, that was a bug in the demo. I'm almost positive that one was fixed in the retail release, but I don't have my bug list in front of me to say for certain.

[Drakon]

Also, is there any way to repair hull damage to starships?

[Mehrunes]

In 4.0.2 ships with less than (I think) 30% hull will be repaired up to 10% between missions until they're back to 30%.

[John DiCamillo]

That should be 50% hull left, not 30%.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

How much do they get repaired? Is it random between 1-10%?

[John DiCamillo]

It just sets the damage to 90% of the current damage.

Hull Left
---------------
10% -> 19%
20% -> 28%
30% -> 37%
40% -> 46%