KA101 the recipe-booker here.
The general idea for whether/not something gets booked is whether it’s simple enough that you could some up with working/complete plans to make it from he general knowledge represented by your skill level.
For instance, it’s not too tough for someone with some ability to work out fabric and sew it together (Tailoring 2) to stitch up fabric to cover themselves. Thus, the cloak remains autolearn.
The fur cloak will also remain autolearn. BUT, since it requires both tailoring (the primary skill) AND survival to make, I’ll probably have it show up in a few survival books. This way, survivalists who haven’t studied tailoring can learn about their options and why they might wanna crack open a Sew Awesome Monthly & reinforce some gear.
The gas mask, though, isn’t something that I’d be able to work out just from learning how to handle fabric and plastic. I might be able to work out the idea of pitting something on my mouth, but that’s bandana/scarf/dust-mask territory. A rubberized mask with clear face shield and chemical filters ain’t something that tailoring ability can handle on its own.
So the gas mask is no longer autolearn. If you take it apart to understand what’s involved, an amateur/hobbyist tailor can put it back together, and then make others: the gas mask has “decomp_learn” at skill 3.
If you’re a student of several other disciplines, that same understanding should let you work out what you need to make a gas mask from studying firefighting, post-nuclear survival, chemistry (lab safety precautions & filtering), emergency medical assistance, or (of course) gas warfare. There are several books containing the gas mask recipe.
So you’d end up with “Huh, if I had goggles, a filter, some hose, and spare filter material, maybe I could attach it together, but it might take some doing.” <tries, insufficent skill> “Nope, too much fine-detail. Need more practice.”
After all this, I take playability into consideration. I originally was extremely stingy with archery, but let the lower-level bows remain autolearn so folks playing no-city or illiterate would have some upgrade potential before the research system gets going.
(For the record, I heartily support a research system, so long as it’s not the typical “sink X resources, wait Y time, get Z upgrade” game-research. Science goes by fits and starts.)
Hoping that helps.
