A conduit has a Bool/Rule inside.
A state contains a slot for animation.
The conduit can be used like a state without having to play an animation.
You can use a state like a conduit gate, but it will want to play an animation.
That’s the main difference and why it exists. If you’re ever in a position that you scratch your head and think I really need a state here to control things or route something somewhere but I don’t want to play an anim, call up your buddy the conduit.
Usually a conduit gets used like a gate.
Lets say, your character can have different status effects put on them, that drastically affects how they look when moving (Exhausted, Wounded and Poisoned) Inside of each of those you have states (Idle, Walk/Run, Jump) that have their own Bool/Rules. You can copy that entire setup, rules and all, gate it behind a conduit like “Status” replace the animations with different versions and you now have “Exhausted and Wounded and Poisoned” all working off of the same bools to walk/run and jump, but the conduit gate keeps it in and out of the right status.
You don’t have to manage a lot of rules between your main node that is talking to wounded, poisoned and exhausted all at the same time. If you do that (hook it all into your main node) it gets hit, and checks all 3+ rules every time, but with the gate it only checks 1. If you do that enough times you can save yourself from hitting a ton of rules all at the same time.