I'd agree with this, I've had similar problems myself.
I had a situation where there were six or seven "groups", each with their own aims, some of which conflicted with each other. A (plus followers) wanted to kill B and didn't care if he survived the encounter or not. B's aim had involved talking to C, but rapidly changed to "survive, somehow" when he saw A coming. Meanwhile group D were trying to stop group E escaping, but unknown to them were being attacked by group F, and over in the corner there NPC G was trying to summon a demon: if any of the others had noticed they'd have been in opposition to this, but they hadn't...
I did find a way of handling it, but it wasn't obvious, nor entirely satisfactory. Each group had their own contest against their own resistance. I looked at who got the best success, they got their aim. Then the next best success, who got part of their aim. And so on down. A lot of hand-waving and making up numbers on the fly. I'm happy like that, I play very HQ-lite anyway, but anyone who wants firmer rules would have been in trouble.
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