Last night, Boba Fett is in a dogfight with Tycho, everything else is on the other side of the board, so there's really nowhere else to go. Boba is doing auto damage, but Tycho has Counter and a Scatter, so it's a weird race to the bottom where Boba still does damage but his attack dice are ineffectual. The Boba player decides he doesn't want to attack, so he won't trigger Counter. Is that legal? It seems against the spirit of the game especially since Boba has this mystery damage field that isn't an "attack".

A player isn't forced to attack. Mauler Mithel's special ability has been used against me combined with intel as well

He does NOT have to attack. I don't see how it's against the spirit of the game It could represent Boba flying defensively, evasively, against an ace pilot he knows would pwn him if he tried to engage.

Also, you know that Tycho doesn't have to stick around in that engagement either, right?

While a squadron attacks are not mandatory, you could argue that their effects are. Boba Fett has an effect that reads with no 'may' or other verbiage indicating optional, and is a class of effects that are Mandatory per the RRG. However I believe that FFG replied with an email stating that it is optional.

A lot of edge classes for optional/mandatory are unclear right now. The answers largely falling at FFG's whims after an issue is risen. Fortunately most of these don't really impact the overall game.

But to the original question of squadron attacks. During its activation, a squadron 'can' attack. 'Can' denotes optional.

Perfectly Legal.

A Squadron may attack and move, in either order.

Just as it does not have to move, it does not have to attack.

Thanks all, makes sense.

Also, just to throw my 2 cents in here, don't forget about those accuracies. I can definitely see how they wouldn't want to risk attacking with Boba under the circumstances, but he does stand a reasonable chance of rolling an accuracy and a damage.