"What kind of thermal/NV equipment do I need" is about like "what kind of offroad vehicles do I need". You really need to know the conditions, ranges, game hunted, terrain, budget, etc in order to make a well-educated decision.
It is a great time to be getting into night hunting though, as Burns and SKane have mentioned above. You can do a lot in the field these days with a fairly small budget. I'd dare to say that a hog hunter in my part of the world with $2k of equipment can kill 95% of the hogs that his buddy with $6k of equipment can kill, given the same hunting scenarios. This is due to our limitations on conditions, terrain, range, and so on. Switching to different terrain or also trying to also incorporate different game, like called coyotes, and the bigger budget is going to start to offer some real advantages in flexibility and capability.
