Here's what I would propose: Take the mods out of the rolling process as much as possible. Let the involved parties take care of it.
Rules of Combat:
Combat is engaged when one or more players commit a violent action against one or more other players.
When combat is engaged, roundtable turns will begin among all parties directly involved in the engagement. Turn order is determined by initial rolls whenever combat involves more than two players. The attacking player goes first.
At the beginning of his/her turn the player will make a choice to either: 1) propose an action and a roll, or - 2) dispute any of the actions/rolls which have been proposed by other players since their last turn. If no disputes have been raised since the player's previous turn, his/her previous turn becomes canonicall and can not be disputed.
A dispute will include a reason for the dispute, and can be approved by either a mod or the player whose action is in dispute. A moderator can approve or deny a dispute but a disputed player can only approve the dispute.
If a dispute is approved by either a mod or the player whose action is in dispute, the combat engagement reverts to the point immediately following the last approved turn and it becomes the disputed player's turn again.
Rolls are confirmed in IRC by either a moderator or all players involved in combat.
TL;DR - player-disputable turntable actions. By submitting an action, you approve all previous actions and rolls (check your opponent's rolls in IRC!). The game can proceed without moderator intervention.
The first conflict I was involved in I don't think ever did end up getting resolved, because we were waiting on mods for rolls. The other player and I were both on and ready to go but everything we wanted to do took a day or two to get a roll on, and after about a week we just lost interest. Been a while but that's how I remember it. We could have resolved it ourselves in half an hour. Mods told us to slow down because they were having trouble keeping up, which indicates to me that mods are a bottleneck to getting conflicts resolved.
I agree that battles need quicker resolution given the accelerated time of the game, but relying on a third or extra party to get involved when they have time slows it down instead of helping.
It also doesn't help that you can do 10 rolls at once when my second action should be dependent on the results of my first.
I think the whole game should work without mods doing the rolls. All they really need to do is step in when people are being unrealistic. But the rolls should be handled by anyone who happens to be on IRC and willing to do the roll and post it. This saves the moderators time, saves the users time, and allows for more detailed gameplay in an accelerated time frame.