Is there a list anywhere on the Net of what the tech items actually do? I haven't been able to find one, and the Official Strategy Guide is not always forthcoming either. For example the Invigorator - what the heck does it do? Not much as far as I can tell. I can't find a description of what it does in game terms anywhere. Experimenting with it makes it appear to be a really weak healing item that is not worth making. Some of the items, like Accelerate Healing, seem grossly inferior to plain old Healing Salves. Maybe they work differently in the real-time combat mode? In turn-based, a lot of things don't seem to work very well - like Clockwork Decoys, who have yet to ever attract enemy attention in my game. They look cool jumping around in real-time though (although the enemy still ignores them). Now I create them just to turn them loose in mass numbers and have a mechanical invasion of "frogs" jumping around the streets. They looked cool jumping around the ruins of Kree at night. Speaking of looking cool, it is rather amusing to see myself and my followers in Machined Plate running across the Tarant Bridge followed by a swarm of automatons - it looks like some kind of cyborg-robot marathon race.
Tech items and all other items show what they do when you use them. If you don't see them slow the text rate down using the speed bar in the options menu. If you want to see how much health you get from some item just note your tealth and take the item and see what the improvement was.