I'm happy to hear you're brave enough to start producing music with no musical background but being a passionate listener.
You don't need a lot of money to do great sounds but in the beginning having a sample pack, great VST plugins and full version of a DAW does speed up the process of learning. ~300€ for the software and samples will do fine for more than a year. Don't begin with too difficult DAW. You can always try a demo version before choosing your way. In my early days I did use the free demo version of Fruity Loops for more than a year, it worked fine.
Also, you don't necessarily need to know terminology, music theory or how to use the DAW. I personally know professional musicians with very little knowledge of the theory behind their music. I also think that too much theory does make composing and using your imagination difficult. Your current lack of knownledge can be used as an advantage if you have the time to try and see certain things for yourself. That is the best way possible to learn and begin making music your own way.
If I got your question 2) right, you must be asking "What should I have" and "What should I do".
You already know the soft- and hardware you should have. I can't really say if you should get a MIDI keyboard or not. The keyboard does give you the ability to actually play something and figure out the connection between a key on the keyboard and a certain sound. It's sometimes faster to sketch the outlines of a melody with the keyboard and make a simple melody really fast. If you buy keyboards, consider carefully the amount of octaves you need to be able to play. More about this concern here.
Then again the 'point-and-click' way doesn't restrict you to only composing something you can actually play. For orchesteral and soundtrack -kind of music you are able to pick notes for a chord freely from a wide range. I've done this, it's possible and it's easy. You don't have to learn scales or notes first or buy a keyboard. Besides, it's free.
Having a little knowledge of music theory, you can still train your ear. If you compose music, you have to be able to hear "good" and "bad" notes. Train every day by listening music and trying to copy melodies to the patterns on your DAW either by clicking with your mouse or playing them on keyboard. As soon as possible begin making your own music along with just playing with the melodies and trying new things. Your first song may be a short loop and that's absolutely fine.
The best thing you could possibly do is trying to achieve a certain sound and melody from a song you like. If you put time and effort to it, you will most likely come up with something better, not the exact replicate of the riff. That will also give you a template from which you can easily modify something different by transposing single notes and playing with rhythms.
Something concrete you would begin with would be making a melody with strings. For that you will need a soundbank covering about 8 octaves of string sounds. Concentrate only on making a good atmosphere with long chords, you can move to rapid arpeggiations later. Imagine for example the song played in the beginning of a movie. Play a single note, find another note that sounds good with the first one, play them together. Then find notes played after the first ones that satisfy your ear.
Another style to compose is to pick three or four chords for a bassline. Then improvise a melody played along with the bassline.
Always think also from the listeners point of view: would I listen to this or not? What would Hans Zimmer do if this was his song?
Exact answer to your third question is: No. I have a friend who has been playing piano for 13 years. He is really strictly restricted to scales, circle of fifths and other rules not yet being capable of composing music. If you want to learn how to compose music, don't focus on learning something else. I don't agree with the other answers telling you to read books to learn how to compose. You will most likely get bored and not coming up with anything new.
