>>4026
>It'd be cool if they have it actually part of the defenses in some way in the future but I doubt it.
I wouldn't count on it. And there are actually in-universe reasons for why so.
First things first, it may have been multi-tier but it sure wasn't triple-backed-up as Shining Armour claimed it to be. Presumably no component of the system had a failover replacement.
But what's most important thing to consider here, is that Shining Armour applied too much security measures. Yes, that's right, he went overboard. And that's a bad thing.
"Security at the expense of usability, comes at the expense of security." The castle presumably isn't staffed only by royal guard, but also civil personel. A personel which needs to move around the castle. If every single door in the castle needs access clearance, with time, it's essentially asking for the equivalent of "sticky note on laptop with password written on it" situations. The guards and regular staff sure as hell won't bother with following the code to the letter when it's such big PITA.
Second issue here, "doubled the ranks of security" and "ponies protect every hallway and door". That's clearly lot of ponies. Lots of ponies you're giving access clearance too. Unless it's been in the making for a long time, increased drafting sure led to decreased training (seeing as easily they left their posts when distracted by AJ or Pinkie this is all but 100% the case I'd say) and lower entry bar. And also you're relying on trusting many many ponies. You can see where this is going.
Also they're protecting only doors. Too bad that throne room has only one door, and lots of windows.
The issue with the fans (and the guards too) is that this is probably a very costly precaution. Plus the fans are very disruptive to the surroundings (and noisy, I guess!), which depending on the location and size of protected area, and worthiness of protected thing/person can be an issue too if the increased security is that much more important then this can be overruled.
Another nitpick with the guard system is that besides the medals there is no formal verification of authority. If you have a medal and an armour, you're a guard for all intents and purposes. Though allegedly obtaining those two things to an outsider takes some effort, so this is a minor nitpick.
Next big issue lies with the geese - As we've seen in the episode, even though that was a falsely reported false positive, aka an actual legit alarm, but I digress unproportionally high ratio of false positives. Nobody will want to deal with system that is constantly going off without any threat in sight.
This is a scenario easily leading to "the boy who cried wolf" case though allegedly this is averted in professional settings. It's bound to be outright ignored or dismantled overtime. Not to mention that the geese system isn't probably fit for protecting living things, things that move.
The floor trap doesn't cover entire area around throne but also how are princesses supposed to get on the throne they can fly I guess... without setting off the trap. More of a defence against surprise frontal charge, but eh, something's better than nothing I guess. It's okay as a last resort.
And as some anon in /mlp/ sticky correctly pointed out, Shining Armour defence only worked because he had prior knowledge of the attack being held. All he had to do was wait a few hours behind the throne, regardless of any security measures applied, even if there weren't any. If the penetration test was done properly, Twilight would have gotten the crown as all security measures were breached by her. Shining just camped behind the throne which supposedly isn't normal operation.