I'm bumping with this post making my case for the high end. So we can settle this.
Anyway, I wanted to bring up something I forgot to bring up earlier. It's how directed energy weapons in Star Wars are highly focused and their AP is often far higher than what one might estimate just at a glance.
Just look at starfighter laser cannons. They're all 7-C based on a calc for a feat from the AOTC film and numerous instances in canon of them being able to punch through the armour plating of vehicles with consistent Town level+ durability feats, such as the
AT-AT (on two passes) and
Kom'rk-class Fighter (with a single burst). And yet the most destruction we've seen them cause is vaporizing other starfighters.
It's the same story with handheld blasters. They're up in the 9-A range of power, with some models of blaster rifle having a setting which can vaporize a human and turn them into a pile of fine ash which can fit in a jar (as noted in the Aftermath novel). And yet we rarely see them causing this kind of destruction even when they're explicitly stated to be firing on the highest setting (such as in the Heir to the Jedi novel).
Then there are Class-A thermal detonators, which have a
calc'ed yield of roughly 8 tons of TNT equivalent, but their AOE is far less than what you would expect from a 33 Gigajoule bomb, which points to highly focused energies in even explosives.
And then there are the infamous 100 Megaton Umbaran long range capital defence turret missiles (their yield was explicitly stated in the TCW animated series). But they don't cause explosions that look to be of that magnitude.
Given all this and the below canon vaporization feats, I hope I've made a good enough case to use vaporization here as well.
The larger, crewed, swivel-mounted gun bubbles on either side of the transport's midline swung around and opened fire with fat pulses of red plasma. "Widen your spacing," the squadron commander said over the comm. "Spacing!" A burst of red plasma caught one of the V-wings squarely and vaporized it.
~ Lords of the Sith
The answer came in the form of another salvo of blaster fire ripping overhead, narrowly skimming the top of the overturned zeezfruit cart that Solo had taken cover behind. Shards of masonry showered down, pieces of it vaporized into a fine dust that made him sneeze.
~Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo and Chewbacca Adventure
^ Bits of masonry being vaporized by normal handheld blasters.
Chewie roared and Solo heard the bowcaster's distinctive snap, catching in his periphery the flight of the long, slower-moving bolt launched from the weapon. The pillar the droid was hiding behind took the hit, but a significant chunk of the permacrete vaporized.
~Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo and Chewbacca Adventure
^ Vaporization of a large chunck of concrete like material from a weapon that is puny compared to the cannons of the gunboat in question.
The remaining fighters tried to split, two to port, one to starboard; Ematt opened up with the ventral turret, and a second TIE exploded into nothingness, vaporized by a direct hit.
~Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo and Chewbacca Adventure
Tarkin monitored the ground-feed holovids. The droid fighters were highly maneuverable but no match for Sentinel's powerful guns. The moon's storm-racked sky grew backlit with strobing flashes and globular detonations, as one after another of the ridge-backed tri-fighters and reconfigurable vultures was vaporized.
~Tarkin
