Lets break your problems with the movie down:
- it was not cop out writing. Rey parents was perfect. Instead of making it really hard to mean something. They made her parents a moot point. She is now a fresh hero , instead of the daughter of (insert who ever you wanted her to be). It also leaves it open to change in the future...say that they want to give her a palpatine daughter arc or something they still have it open. If they put it : she is the daughter of grand moff tarkin , they need to explore that in the movies. If you do that for for all the hero's it would take dozens of movies to do that. And then you get people crying.....there is to much story, we do not need to see uncle ben dying 10 times etc.
- the "death" of snoke was indeed cheesy. but i think he might still be alive. Seen his fast power.
- Fleet chasing and tie stuff. First off the First order kidnapped most of their troopers. They do not have a infinite supply of clones, droids or a whole empire that was setup. So they are not that much cannon fodder. Problem 2, sending out all the tie's could leave them open to resistance fighters...and they could wreck that fleet. And yes in star wars lasers loose potency. In star wars it has been shown before that things can influence strenght of lasers.