You just need a certain amount of points with them. Not sure how much, but definitly works. You'll even get both Shield and Heal ribbons for it
Its the same with medic guns, where you it needs to restore X number of points (or a certain %) to even qualify as a tick. Healing seems to be around 10% for a tick, and it will batch multiple ticks if the device is fast enough, or multiple people are being healed by an AOE effect. Because of this threshold requirement, the ticks you need won't start registering until the device is at least the last 2 levels.
Go find a fight where a bunch of your guys are camping a spawn room, like on a ridge or in a doorway or something. Drop your shield so that it cover them. Sit back, get a magazine and a beer, rez them when they get shot in the head.
Rank 3 Shield Recharger thingy works fine - at least mine does. As far as I know, the heal/shield/repair ribbon rewards aren't calculated by a number of "ticks" but by a numerical value of health/shields restored, so any rank of the tool will contribute to this number, albeit more slowly when using the lower ranks. It only counts when replenishing/repairing non-friendly fire damage though, so if you notice not getting any xp or progress from restoring shields, chances are that the damage was caused by friendly fire I don't believe the Shield Recharger effect stacks/overlaps either so try placing your deployable somewhere that is not already occupied.
Haven't really tested it but I think higher ranks take priority. Meaning if two people place their regen device next to each other the one with the higher rank is the one that is going to get points for it.
I noticed this, and when I was going for my final tier Directive 250 ribbons, I would place mine in the best spot and knife any that were overlapping with it. (Jerk move, yes. But I noticed that my estimated completion time was cut in half!) Anyway, I've got all my shielding ribbons, so I have the shield device collecting dust now. I'm not a fan of it. Also, for the medic directive, go for all the ribbons first! (They carry over, so with a required 10 on the silver tier, you'll have those 10 ribbons on the 60 for the gold tier, so you only have 50 left the moment you get there, and the 60 ribbons when you get them will be added to the 250 requirement, leaving 190 left for the purple final tier. But the kills don't do this, so go for ribbons up til the last tier.) On the last tier, get all your ribbons, then finish off the 1,200 kills requirement. All that's left after that is savoir kills and enemy medic kills. Go for the savior kills, as it's FAR faster at 10% every 30 savior kills rather than 10% for every 80 medic kills. Medic on medic action is fairly uncommon, where as the savoir kills take only 300 instead of 800, and can be gotten off killing any class. Here's my progress, and I've been going for everything I can get my hands on, but savoir kills are fairly rare. (Still not nearly as tough as getting the bulky cost of enemy medic kills though.)
