Does the order of Fxs used in Sonar on the individual tracks react as they would with real hardware effects, stomp boxes, rack stuff? Does the order of the chain still play apart in the sound?
Yes. To my understanding, at least, track effects are applied left-to-right. Therefore, eq applied before reverb would sound different than reverb applied before eq.
I suspect that is why Sonar allows you to move the position of the effects. i.e., you can drag an effect to reorder the chain.
That's true for Track Effects, but not for Bus Effects. They are in parallel. In other words, the output of each effect is sent straight to your stereo outs, and not through subsequent effects, so order doesn't matter.
a plug-in i found indispensable was PSP vintage warmer
its simulates analog compression, has a limiter, its also a multiband compressor also has a nice 2 badn eq