Conquest is too much

We need to be able to save our conquest progress within each "Easy, Medium, Hard" mode. I physically don't have enough time to complete a whole mode in less than two weeks.

Im in the same boat. I also tend to use so much resources on Datacrons than going after the new character. I will say they could find a new place to farm Datacrons and Datacron material. Like maybe a Guild Battles that are like the LS and DS battles but you can farm characters as well as the Datacron Materials in the later nodes. 

It's more a matter of deep roster vs. more mid game roster I think. With everything from 4m to 15m GP accounts playing hard conquest, it's not very time consuming at the higher end where you can just run through the zones while clearing feats and not worrying much about stamina, enabling you to finish up conquest in 1 week or less without too much hassle, vs. smaller accounts that need to worry about stamina since there are less options without a full roster.

I do find conquests somewhat grindy and competitive, but it's an incentive from CG for people to build a large roster and get the newest shiny, so don't really see it changing.

True but I even have a 12 mil gp account with almost leia and I still find it tedious. Especially working graves and sleeping during the day. I always get the  middle 3 crates. Never got a red one before. Like I said above some of the time is getting DC's. I haven't ever gotten a conquest character day 1 after 3 red crates. Always 6 to 12 months or longer.  Oh I sadly know cg don't care to change it. 

Conquest is rather tedious, but can be done with good planning.  These past two sets have been a bit easier than previous ones.  The dark Rey series was beatable in a week with a 12 mil gp account.

The name of the game is being able to do multiple feats at once.  Once you know which feats you need and which you can skip, you can formulate a plan.  Next part is to know which teams to use.  I find JMK can defeat any team in conquest, especially at full stamina.  Another good team to use is a JML plus Wat team.  Generally you use this for the "win 10 battles with new character x" feats.  Throw that character in with JML and Wat and then add say JKLS and Jedi Cal or someone else, and they can get you through the battle.  Tank tech JML and you are good to go.

Overall, I would love to see some sort of sim option based on your previous progress.  Something like 1,000 to 1,250 crystals to repeat your previous performance.  I usually spend 20 to 25 50 crystal refreshes to get red crate so that price seems fair.  I would say you would only have to run through the first group of three conquests in a cycle to establish your benchmark, and then allow the sim option for the next two in the cycle.