The business of comparing performance makes sense if you are designing or
building antennas and are looking for comparison or improvement between them
(particular antennas). Having "standard" vertical or dipole makes sense only if
you have them on the same height as other "better" antenna and looking for gain
over single radiator.
Comparing say 3 el. beam, or long wire to vertical is mostly meaningless,
different patterns, polarization.
Using modeling program gives one idea about relative performance of various
antennas. Building them gives very close picture how they should perform. If
you really want to compare or measure gain over vertical/dipole standard (at
the same height) than do that. One can generally get pretty good idea how
different antennas work from the models (software) and if you want to optimize
or verify real antennas, the best way is do it on say scaled 2m model. Then
there is comparison with neighboring stations for the ultimate test.

GL Yuri, K3BU