Yup. As I recall it was kind of a school-wide effort, with kids relaying solutions of various puzzles to each other until we had enough to complete the game. I do recall working out the Babelfish puzzle on my own, though I also neglected to feed the dog at the beginning of the game soft-locking myself on at least one playthrough.
There's an old Infocom text adventure called Planetfall in which you have a comedy-relief sidekick in the form of a little robot named Floyd. Occasionally when you save the game Floyd will say "Oh boy, are we going to do something dangerous now?"
You are correct. By the TNG era site-to-site transport had become reliable enough that it could be used as needed, but having a pad at one end or the other (or both) of a transport was still safer. It was also more energy-efficient, though that's less of a concern.