Hi Obsidian.
So here's an idea for your UI. Have you ever played Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2? You have? Good.
So have you ever considered where most people pause the game? It's mainly during combat if you didn't know. Now what specific part of combat do most people pause the game? The answer is likely to be parts where multiple clicks need to be made: specifically during inventory management (getting potions) and spell casting.
So my idea: We were having a discussion on the glorious codex about good UIs for Torment and someone mentioned the NWN2 "spell hot button" used to bring up the spell list in that game. I thought to myself, you know, it would be nice if the game would autopause whenever I bring up my lists of spells to cast one during combat.
So my idea is basically to take the old BG2 autopause conditions and to come up with a few new options. Set it up for players who really do like to pause but only while battling. Give us a few toggleable options to autopause the game when the "cast spell" list comes up, when the "use item" command is used, or other locations in game where the amount of time it takes to do an action is longer than a few seconds. So for example, i probably won't pause when I kill an enemy (althought that mgiht be an option for other people who do) but I definitely pause when I'm casting a spell with my mage. I need to click through a list of spells, make sure I got the right spell, click a target, etc. That takes time and it's difficult to do that when I've got enemies in my hair. so the system autopauses whenever i pick my mage and i hit the shortcut button for "cast spell." same for other similarly sensitive sections in game. (yeah i hope you noticed the shortcut button for cast spell).
hope this makes sense.