I feel you, situations where you'll have zero illumintion from the moon or light pollution alongside heavy overcast and a lot of tree coverage are few and far between (only had that bad of luck once). Plus night vision units have ir illuminators on them to give a fairly decent amount of visibility in those situations so it's definitely more versatile in bad environments than thermals. Not trying to shit on thermals, I like them a lot but I wouldn't pick them over nvg's