Would you take Nightshields or Flickerfield on a Ravager?

Just trying to see what is better in an tournament style list. Some people say Nightshields, some say Flickerfields. I usually will flat out my Venoms and hide my Ravagers/Raiders behind them at first then when I bust some troops out of their armour the Venoms take off & machine gun their squads down. I only get into close combat if I have to or to silence some guns/dreadnoughts. Also if I want to focus on destroying a certain vehicle & have to focus a lot of lances on it then I'll use wyches to stun their other vehicles.
I think if I play like this which is more shooting than close combat then the Nightshields would be better on them as long as I concentrate on taking out any missile launchers, ect. first. But I was curious as to what some other people who have been playing longer take & how their decision fits into their playstyle.

I run FFs.

I have been to too many tourney events over the years and ended up playing my final match vs. Space Wolves or IG or something and have the table be practically naked except for a couple of craters.

The ability to bring a cover save (and more than that - an invulnerable save) along with me protects me from bad tables and is also just inherently a potent tool.

I think NSs are fine and have seen them played to good effect, but i believe FFs are inherently superior and more likely to protect your army over the course of a multiple game event.

Can you take a cover save and an invulnerable save? See, a lot of the time when I had FF (playing against mechanized Blood Angels) they would get two or three hits on one vehicle of mine & making two or three 5+s consistently is pretty hard to do.

You cannot combine saves, you always take a single save at your best available save.

Would having Night Shields have prevented the 2-3 hits from happening? That's the only way that example matters. We're open top AV 10-11 skimmers - we're not hard to destroy, and nothing in our Dex can protect our vehicles from an army that wants to bring one down, and certainly nothing but dumb luck will protect us if 2-3 units decide to shoot us up. The goal is to use our defensive tools and mobility to make it hard to bring down too many in any one turn. I think FFs are a better tool for that overall - because I don't put my skimmers into many situations 6" matter except melta and rapid fire - and usually before they can swing that I'm assaulting them. That's why I find FFs better. Plus, it protects me if the table will not allow me cover during deployment - which many tables do because certain venues seem to believe 25% terrain is not a minimum suggested, but a maximum allowed, and also thing craters and small fences are the same thing as a three storey building or anything that blocks LOS.

The thing to remember about a ravager is they have an effective range of 48" (12" move + 26" range) but they are being left within 36" of targets. That means that all the guys with true 48" range are well within even with NS.

It may not seem much at first, but consider that on average most places will see between 50-80% of players being imperials (marines of all colours, guard, inquisitorials), besides a few cannons on tanks, the big anti-armour guns are almost all 48" lascannon, missile, autocannons. The notable exceptions being plasma and melta. But those first three I see in almost every list in some combination because Lascannons are Str9 goodnes, Autocannons are Str7 multiple shots, missles are cheap and plentiful.

Taking that into account, there will be far more cases where a 5++ save will be more effective than -6" range. Like Thor said, the -6" is mostly for melta and rapid fire, and that only happens if someone gets into your backfield, deep strikers, and outflankers generally, and they can be avoided usually.

In my mind for all vehicles, FF first, for the Ravager NS if you have room. You can't count on cover saves to replace the FF, and lots of things that ignore cover will hurt our vehicles.

For me I run the Flickerfields on the Ravager as all the weapons that will be killing them is often around 48" and that often means that even with the -6", they will still hit me right in the face. I rather have a solid 4+ cover, or worse come to worse a 5+ invulnerable whenever I am getting shot at.

I do not expect to have my Venoms, Raiders and Ravagers to solely rely on their Flickerfields to save themslves, but it does help that you can have something to negate the random nonsense of the universe.

"yes".

I think it's a mistake to simply compare ranges between your weapons and your opponents'. If you're in a stand-off firing weapons at each other, you're doing it wrong (and have forgotten what aerial assault is about). The trick is to outmaneuvre your opponent so that while the one guy might get a shot off at you, night shields make sure the others don't. Hence, always use both.

Also, as Thor mentioned, the amount of "against the rules" tables (ones without the necessary cover) makes flickerfields a necessity (and IMO, more necessary than they should be). This, of course, distorts the power balance between armies, and its not in our favour.

I always take FF.

My reason for that is as someone stated above, if you go on to a bad table you will loose that save anyways, and its good to have that extra save, and there are just far to many weapons that have longer range than 36" that I even risk Nightshields on Ravangers.

Now Nightshields is something I use quite often. But only on Assault units, and its not to protect against lascannons and stuff like that, its to protect against bolters and other low range weapons. As with Assault veichles I either go flat out or disembark.

I've always been wary about vehicle upgrades, but the FF is just too good for its cost not to take.

I use both the reason for this is the duel benefit you get as most of you commented on. In a tournament I went up against another dark eldar player his raiders and ravagers only had flicker fields mine had both. This little twist in the game lead to my win and his defeat because 1st round I put a few of his boats that would be harmful to me down and in the bottom of the round his boats that were still alive reposition themselves to take me on when he went to his shooting phase he found out he was out of range do to the night shield. I then shut him down from there. At the end of the game we both agreed that this was the difference of the game, was a lost round of shooting. S

Since using this set up I have benefited from both the night shields and flickerfield in each and every game in one way or another.

To me this is the best set up for are raiders and ravagers.

It's flickerfields only for me, due to the various reasons listed above, lack of LOS blocking terrain, too many 48" weapons.
I also expect to loose my ravagers in a game, they are so much of a threat that I expect an opponent to target them aggressively, with most of his long range firepower, making NS irrelevant. I also want those ravagers firing on full power as soon as possible, so moving fast is rarely an option on the first couple of turns, meaning the 4+ save won't be there for me , hence flickerfields.
The way I look at it is that for 10 points, I am going to give myself a 1 in 3 chance of saving a 115 point ravager, which can't be bad.

I always take flickerfields, and if I have any points left I'll add night shields.

flickerfield every time. its the only vehicle upgrade that exists for me to be honest. i take it on everything i can afford to take it on. it can go all game and never work or it can come off so many times that the enemy think your using fixed dice. bottom line is statistically its saving your vehicle 1/3 of the time its shot at. worth 10pts every time.

I take NS on the HS choices and FF on mid-fielders, if at all.

For one thing, while a lot of people will say "FF negate 1/3 of shots" I'll point out the NS takes shots away altogether. And while a lot of weapons have 48" range, you can still manage to be out of range of those weapons.

However, if all you ever face are Guard and Wolves I can see not bothering with NS, but I think GKs and Necrons will cause enough of a shift in the amount of Guard and Wolf armies that tournaments will start being a much more even mix of armies. And NS against mid-range or short ranges armies is devastating.

I've been pretty worried about bad terrain issues at my LGS, but recently they seem to have been setting up better, although at the last tournament one really bad table hurt me. If I was playing regularly at a place and their terrain was always bad, I'd say/do something about it because it can cripple DE.

After posting this & giving it a lot of consideration, I decided to use both & see what ones helped me out the most. I played two games yesterday...

1750pts against Black Templars (Dawn of War/Annihilation)
Popped his Land Raider on turn 1 during Nightfighting, then he threw pretty much all his units at Vect's Wyches in close combat. By the end of the game Vect's unit had 6 pain tokens, I won 10KP to 6KP. As his one missile launcher was the only weapon that could hit my units, I'd have to say the Nightshields helped out way more than the Flickerfield.

1500pts against Salamanders (Dawn of War, whatever the mission is where we each have only one objective in each deployment zone)
Once again, Nightshields helped me stay away from almost all his shooting besides S4 Bolters. He did have a few Missile Launchers and a Hunter Killer Missile but the I think I made 3 or 4 Flickerfield saves, or had cover. I lost 3/5 Venoms by the end of the game due to me making poor decisions in the movement phase, but all he had left was his SC's Terminators (I forget his name, Draigo maybe?) who I didn't bother to touch as they had a 3+ Invulnerable save (I just immobilized their Land Raider and left it with two useless flamers), the disabled Land Raider, and a Drop Pod. I think I lost a unit of Trueborn as well, but that was it.

So what did I learn? Take both! Both saved my vehicles many times over, and were well worth it. Make their long-ranged AT your first priority, and Nightshields will really come into their own. They really help staying out of Melta/Rapid Fire range too. And Flickerfields come into play when you need to move out in the open.
One thing I'll say though is that with Nightshields, I think you either have to take them on all your vehicles or none at all. Your opponent will just shoot down what they can reach, and we cannot afford those kind of losses.

Yes.

Or more correctly, "it depends"
In an environment where I can control the amount of terrain on table or know that there's going to be lots of terrain, nightshields.

If I don't know, Flickrfields. Too many tournaments take a bare minimum approach to terrain, so have an omnipresent invulnerable save helps make up for that.

I go with FF. Nightshields are great and all, but are very situational. On Raiders, I think both is a good option. Of course, if you play alot of armies that use meltaguns and assault cannons( i.e. Blood Angels or Sisters), NS will cripple them. NS are kinda useless against armies DE can struggle with, such as IG and Las-Plas Razorspam.