Ok then let's have a medium HE that has 800 range but a glaring weakness, that's not hard to come up with. I don't even want to replace missiles with any sort of weapon. But when you get to longer ranges and higher bonuses from ITU, it gets bloody annoying when your cruisers or capitals shoot the HE weapons waaay before the kinetics strike, meaning it's a pure waste. Or when using the 700 range Heavy Mortar, it takes so long for the shots to first, get in range, and then actually hit since they're so slow. If this is intentional, then why do smalls and heavies have "normal" HE lineups?
Deleting frigates with HE shots is such a weak excuse when every single good frigate used in end game relies heavily on shields, they laugh at HE ballistics. You either overwhelm with missiles, kinetics or beams. Potential new HE middle of the road weapon (even if we exclude my proposed glaring weakness) would be the last thing you'd use to try and kill Scarabs, Tempests, Omens, Monitors, etc.