There are missiles that, while they get up to a considerable fraction of c, are still sublight, and are prone to being shot down, running out of fuel, or losing track of their targets, and there are energy weapons that go at exactly the speed of light because they are light -- and are wholly impractical to keep aimed at a target at all but the shortest ranges. Oh, and his favorite personal-use weapon is still based on the principle of throwing bits of heavy stuff at your target at high speed -- they're just rather pointy bits of heavy stuff.

The whole FTL comms thing does strain credibility a bit, but it's a logical result of the universe he decided to create, and a fairly standard conceit. And we get the fun of seeing what it's going to do to the world. So I'm okay with that. :)