what I wound up doing was to create a variable for "Action Pause", and I'm know just having to retro fit all of the appropriate code with it, so that...
if "Action Pause" = 0 then
execute AI and Behvaviours
elseis "Action Pause" = 1 then
do absolutely nothing
lol that way I can have "every X milliseconds" counters reset "Action Pause" back to 0 to resume the game instead of having to wait for the player to press a key or something.