TLDR; It would be handy in several cases to have a field that auto-increments so we can include an incrementing version number in the build id. I do understand the “build” process is intended to be very intentional and the thought was to manually adjust that build id when you make a build. However, it would be useful to be able to automate the build process also.
I know, also, there are a lot of ways people could want to iterate those build numbers. Possibly a simple number field and a substitution tag could make it simple. Example, if I have VerticalProduct, making the build id vertical-product-v12.{{buildNumber}} and having the build number field substitute in for the {{buildNumber}} tag, or something similar, would give us a lot of flexibility in making the build id increment the way we want without going too crazy with all the different ways people could increment.
With some clients, we are generating builds for deployment on a fair short schedule, so having this automated and using builds allows me to keep the window where I need to force developers (from all over the world) to stop working, as short as possible, as well as to prevent picking up a breaking change a dev just started working on.