I like tomyee's suggestion in post above about Fixed Vertices having an influence radius around the fixed area. But, I would rather have a secondary button which would accomplish this - maybe "Fixed Vertices Weighted" with an accompanying input box for influence percentages.

Regarding Start/Stop Vs Pause/Resume, for the Static Simulation, it is always Start/Stop. There is no Pause/Resume. For an Animated Simulation, it is clear that the only way to re-start it would be to start all over from scratch, but in the context of staying inside of VWD simulator, and using the Dynamic Deformation tool in conjunction with static sims, one has to re-start the sim when it is disabled (not paused - and still shows as running) by use of the DD tool.

I just learned to deal with it, and I can spend hours in one VWD session going back and forth between static simulation with dozens of starts/stops, and deform simulation work before I finally decide to send completed work back to host. Hell, I've been working on one piece for over a week with over twenty static drape versions (from initial animated drape) still trying to get it right.