Conquest vs Operations

I've been playing BF1 for over 18 months now and I almost exclusively play conquest as a game mode.

I'm older (mid 40s) and played a ton of BF1942 and Battlefield 2 back in the day, but then took a long break from the series when life got in the way.

So maybe it's just old habits, but I always default to conquest as that was pretty much the only mode available back in the day and it just feels...right.

I've seen operations mentioned in this sub countless times and some people seem to play it almost exclusively.

I've given it a try several times now and I'm usually just dying repeatedly to mortars or not sure what I'm supposed to be doing.

I mean, I get the premise (attack or defend points and slowly progress up the map or stop the attackers), but is there something I'm missing?

What's the appeal of operations that I can't find in conquest? So far I find playing conquest provides a slower, more strategic gaming experience. Squad up, push flags, defend choke points, back-cap if possible, and so on. It just seems like operations consists of either blindly pushing one of the objectives or, if you're on defense, parking yourself near one and holding it. I just don't see the same depth of overall map strategy, or am I way off?

Those of you who love operations, what am I not seeing? Am I just too damn old and curmudgeonly?