Ie range 1, red white white and just add its dice to the lasgun attack pool? Instead of spending an action to place token.

If there’s no rules in the book that allow you to do that then no. The reason why? The thermal detonators are an area weapon so they affect everything in the radius listed on the card. You would damage your own units trying to use it. You can’t add area effect dice to a ranged attack pool. Much like you can’t add melee dice to a ranged pool. There are rules for these things clearly layed out in the RRG

No, the proton bomb is not a melee or ranged weapon. The Proton Bomb Saboteur upgrade card does not have weapon stats to add to your Rebel commandos.

4 hours ago, Turan said:

No, the proton bomb is not a melee or ranged weapon. The Proton Bomb Saboteur upgrade card does not have weapon stats to add to your Rebel commandos.

Ok...

So its card looks just like a normal weapon to me, with the addition of the action icon to place the token.

So what stops it being a normal weapon?

50 minutes ago, Ophion said:

So what stops it being a normal weapon?

There are a few reasons, but I think this is the most clear-cut one (from Area Weapon on page 13):

Quote

Area weapons cannot be added to an attack pool during an
attack made by a unit.

The yellow range icon on the card indicates an area weapon.

Slightly less clear-cut might be this one:

Quote

Area weapons can be used only through abilities and other
game effects that specifically allow the use of area weapons.

A normal attack action does not "specifically allow" area weapons. Currently, the only way to use area weapons is detonating a planted token (whether via the condition card, or the commando's upgrade card).

Nice. Thank you

1 hour ago, Ophion said:

So its card looks just like a normal weapon to me

nashjaee answered this clearly - the difference of the yellow range icon should immediately make it look different to you from every other ranged weapon in the game, which uses a blue icon.

Can’t “shoot” the bomb, but I believe you can run up to a unit, drop them bomb then detonate it :-).