I think you may be making this way more painful for yourself than you need to. Triggering drums from a keyboard is simple, and editing options are not overly complex. The two biggest things are having kits available that define
your sound (and when you build these, save them), and a way to fire those sounds off (and a MIDI controller is your perfect choice).
Back to the point in the OP... once you get proficient with how to create/edit things, I think you will find that route incredibly "quick." PRV should become your best friend with drums... (can see my ramblings below for more detail).
As an aside (i.e. superfluous gibberish)... I just did this while typing this post... can throw this into
"stupid and creative ways to use X3" (I forget which version you are running, but think I saw you were on X3)
1) Grab a mic, insert and audio track, record a beat vocally (for one drum use a monotone).
2) Insert MIDI track, drag the audio track to it (Shift-drag the clip), converts to MIDI
with velocity data.
3) Insert Session Drummer, load your preferred kit, assign the output of the MIDI track in 2 to SD.
4) Double click the MIDI track (opens PRV), hit Ctrl-A to select all notes, and move them to the drum of your choice (if done in monotone, you should have only one note line), but not a big matter...
5) In PRV, with the + (move cursor) you can move notes individually to drums of your choice.
6) As long as you get the beats you want, can do all drums in a quick pass (one recording) and move them up/down as necessary.
7) All done in X3 with
no MIDI controller at all
What you get is a MIDI beat to your exact definition, and can even make the "Tom tom tom tom Bam" sound with the right vocal touch (but doesn't matter that much as velocities are easy to edit as well (see Charlie Roy's video for a demonstration)).
Can even just lay a mic down and pound on the desk...
Quick Edit: As the point of this technique is to
preserve timing, be sure to hold the Shift key when performing move operations, I realized as I re-read this that I neglected to stress this point. Shift dragging in the PRV also will trigger the drums as it passes over them so you can preview the sound as you move them through the kit.