Can filter forge produce maps for spherical objects?

First of all, fear not, there's always 30-60 precent discounts for FF. It's hardly ever the full price

Now to your question, while alot of filters are seamless or have a seamless option, not all of them are good for planets, most filters on the library will produce pinching at the poles.

There are some filters that will produce very nice results for a globe, or a planet, with no pinching or seams, and there are some filters that try to make other filters do it too.

With some experiance you can probably adapt most filters to your needs.

For high res renders note that you will have to buy FF proffesional, which is more expensive (or less cheap, as the price isn't that high to begin with).

Before yuo pay a big sum of money, why not download the trial version of FF?
The trial version is actually the full pro version, and will work with no limitations what so ever for 30 days.
That way you have a whole month to test FF and it's Filters, and the nodes available in the editor, and how people make filters that work well for spherical mapping.

BTW, you should know, there are some known issues FF has with large textures.
First, the render engine can be rather slow, so if you need realtime or very fast results this is probably not for you.
Another issue is that FF uses it's own memory manager, that is 6 years old and can't take advantage of today's computer power. That makes it lose track of things during rendering of large images. Usualy the problem can be avoided if you use FF as a Photoshop plugin, instead of the stand alone version, but be aware the problem exists.

Still, the bottom line is, you can use the software for 30 days in pro mode and see how it works for you

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Nebukadnezar wrote: I don't think there is an out of the box component or option for it, but it's possible

That's exactly right.
There nothing in the FF toolbox that is intended for spherical mapping, but there are filters and snippets that do it, and you can learn fr om them.

ThreeDee and Inujima both have done it, among others. All it takes is the technical or mathematical know how.
I for one, wouldn't have a clue wh ere to begin