I have operated high speed vessels at night for years (work) and I can't imagine why someone would want to do it by choice. That being said, I believe there are two approaches to how one could operate: (1) As many bright lights covering the area in front of you vessel as possible. These light should be as far forward and below the operator as possible and include both spot and flood lights. While it is nice to get the lights up high, when running on the rain/snow/fog you lose a huge amount of vision due to light wash. I always painted the bow area with a matte black finish to reduce. In my opinion, the lights really don't serve much purpose other than to soothe the operators nerves as obstacle avoidance at higher speeds becomes more problematic and then there is (2) Absolutely no lights. And I mean none. I typically would turn down the radar as low as possible and cover the screen with smoked plastic to cut light transmission even further. I covered engine gauge lights and if things got iffy I would often turn off the nav lights (that green light can be bright!) - yes, flame away for turning nav lights off but trust me, there was nobody around. I would often run with my head out the window as even with minimal light inside there was still some reflection.
Radar and plotter are 100% mandatory IMO and a person should know how to tune the radar to optimize the image. I have tried FLIR and it is OK, but again at high speed I question the value.
One other consideration, I always ran aluminum props as hitting something is inevitable. I much preferred changing a prop that blowing out a lower unit.