Mining laser reduced effectiveness in 1.10.2?

With Minecraft 1.7.10 and a recent build of IC2, a mining laser in horizontal mode can mine about 56 sand, and nearly as much dirt or netherrack. When mining stone, it penetrates about 7 or 8 blocks iirc, and goes a bit further if it encounters ore.

With Minecraft 1.10.2, it only mines about 15 sand or 5 stone (I haven't got exact figures for other materials), and stops sooner if it encounters ore.

I found some entries in the changelogs that might be relevant, but I don't really understand why this has changed.

http://jenkins.ic2.player.to/job/IC2_18/57/changes
"Mining laser, misc fixes."

http://jenkins.ic2.player.to/job/IC2_18/176/changes
"Mining laser is now 9 times more fun"
I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean - I doubt it's referring to scatter mode, because that generates 25 beams.

http://jenkins.ic2.player.to/job/IC2_110/2/changes
"Fix the mining laser range."
Unless the 1.7.10 range was somehow a lot higher than intended, it doesn't seem fixed to me.

Update: I found the 3x3 mode, which is presumably what the "9 times more fun" message was about, though it's not documented anywhere I've been able to find - the IC2 Wiki, the official FTB Wiki, and the unofficial FTB Wiki all have pages about the mining laser, but none of those have been updated to explain how the 3x3 mode works.

Also, I did some more detailed testing of the penetration distance of horizontal mode in the two different versions of Minecraft (using IC2 2.2.826 and 2.6.81 respectively), and I've looked at decompiled code for both versions. I think the 1.7.10 version goes by blast resistance, and 1.10.2 goes by hardness. However, looking at the decompiled code, I don't understand how it ends up digging so far through sand in 1.7.10, or why this was changed for the 1.8 builds, while it had apparently been left alone for so long in the 1.7.10 builds.

Sand (2.5 blast resistance, 0.5 hardness)
1.7.10: 62 blocks broken, 57 collected
1.10.2: 15 blocks broken, 13 collected

Netherrack (2 blast resistance, 0.4 hardness)
1.7.10: 71 blocks broken, 60 collected
1.10.2: 18 blocks broken, 17 collected

Grass Blocks (3 blast resistance, 0.6 hardness)
1.7.10: 55 blocks broken, 49 collected
1.10.2: 12 blocks broken, 11 collected

Dirt (2.5 blast resistance, 0.5 hardness)
1.7.10: 62 blocks broken, 55 collected
1.10.2: 15 blocks broken, 13 collected

Iron Ore (15 blast resistance, 3 hardness)
1.7.10: 15 blocks broken, 13 collected
1.10.2: 2 blocks broken, 2 collected

Stone (30 blast resistance, 1.5 hardness)
1.7.10: 7 blocks broken, 7 collected
1.10.2: 5 blocks broken, 4 collected

Cobblestone (30 blast resistance, 2 hardness)
1.7.10: 7 blocks broken, 7 collected
1.10.2: 3 blocks broken, 3 collected

Bricks (30 blast resistance, 2 hardness, but blacklisted for the laser in 1.7.10)
1.7.10: stops laser
1.10.2: 3 blocks broken, 2 collected

Obsidian (60 blast resistance according to IC2 wiki (changed from vanilla 6000), 50 hardness)
1.7.10: stops laser
1.10.2: stops laser

Glass (1.5 blast resistance, 0.3 hardness, but seems to be handled specially)
1.7.10: laser passes through, and can break blocks beyond the glass without breaking the glass
1.10.2: laser passes through, and can break blocks beyond the glass without breaking the glass

Yes. It does nothing if you try to shoot it into empty air, but if you shoot at a target block, it generates a 3x3 pattern of beams, directed horizontally, up, or down, depending on the angle formed between the player and the target block. Thus it can be used to make a nice 3x3 horizontal tunnel, vaguely similar to the Railcraft Tunnel Bore (although without the placed rails, gravel fill, etc.), though it's not limited to purely North, South, East, and West.

It costs 10500 EU per use, and each beam seems to have roughly the same penetration as horizontal mode, but since horizontal mode costs 3000 EU per use (the wikis that say 1250 EU are out of date, I checked this myself by recharging the laser in a disconnected MFE before and after and comparing the MFE's power level), it's much more efficient to dig a tunnel using 3x3 mode (at least compared to using the mining laser in horizontal mode).

Update: I downloaded several older builds of IC2, and even back to version 0.90, the number of blocks a mining laser can dig through was based on the explosion resistance of said blocks. I still want to know: Why was this suddenly changed for the 1.8 builds to base it on the hardness instead?

Sorry for necropost, but I recently realized I never really got an answer as to whether this was intentional. Should I file a bug about it?