Conquest Why?

You don't need pirates anywhere near r8 to do all the pirate feats.

Its no different from any other conquest where a good number of feats require newer characters, and even then the feats can be comfortably cheesed.

Even then pirates are 4 months old so its hardly as if they are as new as some characters required for previous conquests.

Skill issue.

I'm not much bigger at 13.15m and finished it in 5 days. Its one of the easiest conquests yet, and a roster of your size should be red box this comfortably regardless of disks.

I don't know which feats your having problems with boss feats are a bit of a puzzle but doable with consumables The full pirate feat in sector 5 is doable with a g12 quiggold with a protection shield disk idially blue but green will work solid intel  ruthless offense and weak spot any disk that will up quigold offense. you want him modded for offense and surviveability you want a mon mothma node for this  quig essetnially solo's the team properly modded with the right disks you can usualy do 3-4 battles before you start losing the battle

Thank you posting your notes.  Very helpful for future GA.  I’d also like to add Padawan Obi-Wan is exceptionally good on any team as a booster with his Omicron.  He’s absolute beast mode to any team. 

If it helps going forward here are my notes for those feats.

Sector 4 - Vane/Silvo survive: If you have Reva, use Reva, GI, 7th, Vane, Silvo vs Rey Training. I find Inquisitors are quick to deal with this team, and subbing in Vane/Silvo I was still able to get the win here - focus first on RH Finn if he's on the team, followed by R2 & Holdo if they're on it. I like to use 7th's ability block on JTR or BB8 since it will dispel foresight and still hit them. 

Sector 5 - Pirates team: This was tough for me, and my new Pirates are all sitting at relic 3 (except Hondo who is r9), and I don't have Maz. I used Ithano lead with Vane, Silvo, Quiggold, and either Brutus or Hondo. As I played around between the two I found Hondo's basics were doing more damage than Brutus. This team was usually doing pretty poorly at 80, sometimes 90% stamina though, so I'd have to get them in the 90s, do an attack, sometimes would try two, and wait for them to replenish. I believe I used a stim or two to wrap this one up. I should also note that I have Vane with 6 dot gold mods suited for defense, protection, and health (though he still doesn't feel beefy enough). My Brutus has a zeta on Mutineer, and Hondo has both zetas. I used this team mostly against First Order and tried to take out Sith Trooper and anyone with an AoE. There's probably a better team for them to get this done against but i haven't yet figured out which team. 

My Savage is r1 and got walloped against that Sector 3 boss. Not sure what relic he would need to be to get the win. I only tried once or twice and decided I'd come back if needed. With the "survival" feats I often use GLeia and put them as the 5th, fight against a team with only 1 AoE and take them out (Phoenix: Sabine, FO: Sith Trooper). Log roll and select the suvivor, then have R2 stealth the survivor. Usually by then the battle is about done. Problem is the need for this team to have constant stamina. So using my Inquisitor method above helps a lot. 

I think the main problem of these "use these 5 toons" achievs is that is very mod (devs would say it's our problem) and disk (this is pure RNG) related. Maybe, you never get those disks. For example, clones vs gamorrean may be a pain... unless you have a couple of "healers and supports deal damage based on their health" and Echo one-shots the whole enemy team. And so on.

I have to run my guild alt through CQ, which is slightly above the OP's account in GP, but bad on recent toons. 

The alt got red crate no problem, and it had very few new pirates at relic (I think just SM33, Quig, and Ithano, and only SM33 was 7-stars or better than r2). It's important to learn a few tricks for taking down squads before they can kill your weaker toons. Maul starts with Frenzy, and certain toons start with bonus turns or bonus TM. The obvious one is Wat Tambor. Use Maul lead, 2 of your best Mandalorians, the toon you need to survive, and Wat Tambor. On the first turn Wat gives Attacker-Tech to Maul, then Maul and buddies rip through the enemy without giving them a chance to do anything. This works particularly well with the Stacking Fervor disks that grant +Off% for every out of turn attack. Meanwhile, with Zealous Ambition, using Dash or Admiral Raddus as your lead allows you to one-shot entire enemy squads. Dash is particularly good since those who survive are dazed. This also works with GL Leia + Captain Rex. And, of course, if you can't trash the enemy quickly enough, Jedi Master Luke + 2 Jedi + Wat (tank tech on JML) + the toon you want to survive will win a longer battle. Jeez, I'm even forgetting SLKR + Hux + KRU + any two toons (so you can do Silvo + Vane). And there are a number of tanks with pre-taunts. 

Besides just going full offence or using tanks with pre-taunt, there are other things you can do to help yourself as well. I know it seems outrageous, but if getting Conquest toons in only 3 months matters to you, you can also spend an Omicron on Padawan Obi-Wan. From learning how to best exploit 

Even with all these options, I also encourage you to remember that there's no problem in getting gold crate instead. Especially on the first CQ of a cycle. You can get the toon in 4 to 6 conquests instead of 3 and using very little effort compared to what's required for red crate. 

There's no reason you can't red crate, but if you don't, it's far from the end of the world. 

Booming Voice + the one that grants stacking Off% for every attack out of turn is just as good as some WeakSpot setups were in past conquests. (Not as good as the very best WS setups, but still very good.)

ZA, Weak Spot, +Off per out-of-turn, you really only need one of those three. 

I feel your pain. I struggle to Red box at Hard but that is often because the requirements to hit are so tight since some of the feat points require brand new release characters and teams at times. If you don't have to releases then you have to accept a handicap of 10 or more points. I get it that CG want to push people to get the new toys but its does feel a little off.

Even so, I typically now gun for Gold boxes and just wait. I already know that people will be running around with R9 Strangers as soon as this is over. Its a shame that some things aren't time constrained and not just straight out whale bought but again I do get that there are financials to hit. 

At the end of the day, these characters will ultimately be obtained if not today it will a little later down the months ahead. 

For a couple years now, it's been quite clear they abandoned the original intent of conquest after about 6 months which was to test roster depth. All it tests now is did you get all the latest toons. 

The old raid thing was nice, but the teams were odd to say the least. Stims got me through the ones i had issues with.