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In TROJ, a thermal detonator is broduced, ans is assumed to be a rather nasty little weapon.

Is it some kind of miniature hydrogen bomb, or just a simple incindeary grenade?

Its a barradium explosive.
Basically its a bloody powerful bomb.

It's not hydrogen, but we know its a nuclear reaction weapon.

The peculiar thing about thermal detonators is that they do not "explode" in the normal sense of the word, but rather cause a contained disruption of sorts. They have a set "blast radius" in which everything is incinerated while leaving everything else untouched. Their trademark is a perfectly round, completely smooth crater. Their most effective use seems to be to cause critical damage to structures. We see this in Shadows of the Empire when a few detonators tossed into a vent shaft destroyed Xizor's Pallace. TIE Bombers also use detonators for surface bombardment, probably because if you can get them in the right spot, they can bring anything down. Now, I have no idea what it takes to cause a reaction like that...

I read the explanation that it creates a containment particle field when it explodes. Not sure where it comes from.

Lazy Raptor wrote:The peculiar thing about thermal detonators is that they do not "explode" in the normal sense of the word, but rather cause a contained disruption of sorts. They have a set "blast radius" in which everything is incinerated while leaving everything else untouched. Their trademark is a perfectly round, completely smooth crater. Their most effective use seems to be to cause critical damage to structures. We see this in Shadows of the Empire when a few detonators tossed into a vent shaft destroyed Xizor's Pallace. TIE Bombers also use detonators for surface bombardment, probably because if you can get them in the right spot, they can bring anything down. Now, I have no idea what it takes to cause a reaction like that...

Do you think that Thermal detonators were dropped by the bombers in TESB, when bombing the asteroid?

Tribun wrote:Do you think that Thermal detonators were dropped by the bombers in TESB, when bombing the asteroid?

I would think that would be normal proton bombs.

Tribun wrote:
Do you think that Thermal detonators were dropped by the bombers in TESB, when bombing the asteroid?

No. TIE Bombers can carry a variety of payloads depending on the mission. For attacking capital ships or space stations they mostly use concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, heavy rockets or inertial space bombs. For surface bombardment, they can drop proton bombs or free-falling thermal detonators. Since they were in space, I would assume they were using the former.

That always bugged me about the Star Wars video games. In ROTJ, I got the impression that the detonator that Leia was carrying could destroy the entire building, but in the games they're pretty much always treated as wimpy little grenades.

Drooling Iguana wrote:That always bugged me about the Star Wars video games. In ROTJ, I got the impression that the detonator that Leia was carrying could destroy the entire building, but in the games they're pretty much always treated as wimpy little grenades.

There are different classes of thermal detonators. If I recall correctly, the type Leia had were the same type Lando used to bring down Xizor's palace.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:

Drooling Iguana wrote:That always bugged me about the Star Wars video games. In ROTJ, I got the impression that the detonator that Leia was carrying could destroy the entire building, but in the games they're pretty much always treated as wimpy little grenades.

There are different classes of thermal detonators. If I recall correctly, the type Leia had were the same type Lando used to bring down Xizor's palace.

Actually, by visual identification alone, the one Leia had is exactly the same as the ones you see in most of the games (except for Rebel Strike, which IIRC has the cylinder type).

Lord of the Farce wrote:

DPDarkPrimus wrote:

Drooling Iguana wrote:That always bugged me about the Star Wars video games. In ROTJ, I got the impression that the detonator that Leia was carrying could destroy the entire building, but in the games they're pretty much always treated as wimpy little grenades.

There are different classes of thermal detonators. If I recall correctly, the type Leia had were the same type Lando used to bring down Xizor's palace.

Actually, by visual identification alone, the one Leia had is exactly the same as the ones you see in most of the games (except for Rebel Strike, which IIRC has the cylinder type).

B or C? (B is long and tapered, like a lightsabre, C is short, all stormies have one)

Lazy Raptor wrote:The peculiar thing about thermal detonators is that they do not "explode" in the normal sense of the word, but rather cause a contained disruption of sorts. They have a set "blast radius" in which everything is incinerated while leaving everything else untouched. Their trademark is a perfectly round, completely smooth crater. Their most effective use seems to be to cause critical damage to structures. We see this in Shadows of the Empire when a few detonators tossed into a vent shaft destroyed Xizor's Pallace. TIE Bombers also use detonators for surface bombardment, probably because if you can get them in the right spot, they can bring anything down. Now, I have no idea what it takes to cause a reaction like that...

Sounds like a warp bomb...described in the non-canon novel "Federation".

When the bomb detonates, a spherical warp field is generated which expands faster than the speed of light, while inside the antimatter explosion expands slower than lightspeed. Since the bomb's field emitter is consumed in the explosion, the field collapses...again, faster than the speed of light. The explosion by-products...vaporised matter and radiation...are swept away to the subspace contunuum as the field collapses, leaving a perfectly spherical, clean crater, which appears apparently intantaneously.