Trading Post User's Manual
Assuming you are the one starting a trade...
Open the Trading post and click on the "Create a new trade" Link, top right of page.
This will open a page with "Trade With:", "Ranch Cash to offer:", and "Trade Message:" on it.
"Trade With:" - type or copy and paste the username of the person you wish to trade with in this box, or if they are on your Friends List you can select them from the drop down "Select a Friend" list.
"Ranch Cash to offer:" - This is only needed if you are offering to buy someone else's animal, or you are giving cash as well as animals as your end of the deal. (The terms of the deal are most easily worked out thru Ranch Mail, before going to the trading post) If no cash is involved on your end just leave this blank.
"Trade Message:" - This is simply to send a message with your trade, usually something like "here's my horse, please add 2000 RCs to your end of the deal" or something similar, nothing is required to be written here.
OK, you've filled that out and hit "Next" at the bottom right of the page.
On the next page you select a pasture to open, select the dot next to a pasture, if you are providing an animal as your part of the trade make sure it's the pasture your animal you are selling is in!
Hit the "Next" button.
Ok, this one's a little confusing, if you want to add an animal to the trade you have to check the box next to it's name (or their names as the case may be) and hit the "Add and Return to Pasture Selection" button, if your not offering an animal (or animals) then you basically do nothing and just hit "Next".
For the sake of this I'll assume you are selecting an animal, check it's box and hit "Add and Return to Pasture Selection".
This takes you back to pasture selection (the previous screen) and you can either select another pasture (this is in case you have animals in multiple pastures to add) or just leave it on the same pasture and hit "Next" again. If there are no more animals to add to the trade simply hit "Next" again on the pasture screen.
This will take you to Your Offer screen, it will have a box with your offer shown, if it's OK then you can hit the "Finish" button, if you forgot to add something you have the "Previous" button option. (As on most of the other pages, so you can
always go back and add more) It will have a Check box next to the animals selected and a "Remove from Trade" button, if you put in the wrong animal by mistake checking it's box and hitting the "Remove from Trade" button will remove it from the Trade Offer.
Assuming everything's OK click the "Finish" button and you will receive a "Your trade has been saved." message.
Now it's the other person's turn.
They will get a notice under Events, "X has requested a trade with you", X being your name. The other rancher will be referred to as "They" thru the rest of this manual.
They click on the notice and the Trading Board screen opens, with the trade by "X" listed, they need to click on "View", the blue link to the left of the Rancher's Name.
A double box now appears with X's offer on the Right side and "Your Offer" on the Left, this is where "Y" adds their part of the deal.
At this point "They" have 3 choices, to Accept the offer, Edit the Offer or Cancel Trade.
If "They" hits Accept trade without adding their part of the deal it will come back to you for your approval, for some reason you do not get a notice that the trade was accepted on your Ranch Page when it's accepted, possibly a bug, you will have to check on the trade in the Trading Post to see if it's accepted at this point.
You will now have the same double box when you view the trade, with "They"s offer on the Right. You will also have the same options as "They" had, to Accept the offer, Edit the Offer or Cancel Trade.
As you can only edit your side of the deal I would suggest Ranch Mailing the other person and asking why they didn't add their part of the trade to the trade!
Also at this point I would recommend either doing nothing or Canceling the offer, as you can't add to their side of the trade so Edit really isn't a help at this point. All you can do is remove or add to your offer. And unless you want to give your animal away I'd recommend you avoid "Accept"! If they won't add their part of the deal I'd recommend Canceling it.
If "They" hits Edit they get a screen like "X"s screen after hitting "Create a new trade", except that "Trade With:" is greyed out because it's a trade in progress. As we assumed earlier "X" is offering an animal and expecting RCs as payment, "They" needs to enter the amount to pay into the "Ranch Cash to offer:" section of the form, and can add a message in the "Trade Message:" area if they desire.
"They" then hits next.
"They" now see the "Select a Pasture" screen, this is only important if they are adding an animal to their side of the deal, if they are they should be sure to select the proper pasture, for the sake of this we will assume they are just paying cash for the animal offered by "X" and just hit "Next".
The pasture that was selected (you cannot select no pasture, do not know why) now opens up and displays any tradeable animals (I know ones in the Fair won't show up, not sure yet what else but would assume Auction wouldn't show up either) and since animals aren't part of "Y"s side of this deal they don't check any animals and hit "Next".
Next page is a box which says "Trade with: X" and a box showing "Your Offer", the RCs will be displayed here, if the amount is right they hit "Finish" and also get the "Your trade has been saved." message.
I don't think I need to explain what happens if "Y" hits "Cancel Trade", do I?
Assuming the Trade was edited by "They" you will now have a "'They' has sent you a counter offer." message on your ranch page. Click it and you will see a double box with what "They" offered on the right side and your offer on the left. You will have the same 3 choices again, to Accept the offer, Edit the Offer or Cancel Trade.
If their side is what was agreed on simply hit "Accept Trade". The "Accept Trade" button changes to "Cancel Accept", so if you change your mind for any reason you can withdraw your acceptance of the trade offer. You can close the window, it's their turn again.
At this point "They" (I would think) should get a notice but for some reason they don't, I would assume this is a Bug and will change at some point but for now this is how the system works, I would recommend Ranch Mailing "They" to let them know you accepted the trade so they can too.
"They" now has received your Ranch Mail and clicks on the "Trading Post" button on the left side of their Ranch Page.
The page that opens displays all trades "They" currently has in progress, for the sake of simplicity I'll assume yours is the only trade they currently have going. "They" clicks the "View" link and the double box screen opens again, with the same 3 choices, assuming all is OK "they" clicks "Accept Trade" and gets a "This trade has been completed. The animals and Ranch Cash have been transferred." message.
Back on your Ranch Page you will get a " Trade with 'They' is Complete." message under events, both ranchers receive this notice,it's simply a notice that the trade was accepted and can be cleared or clicked on, either way it just dis-appears.
Your Done!
OK, this was a simple trade, just to walk you thru it. The Trading Post cannot be cheated as far as I know. (I've tried to and haven't found a way yet) Anytime the trade is edited by either side the acceptance of the trade is canceled and you will have to re-accept or reject the trade, look over the trade terms carefully, make sure the right animals were entered into the trade and that RCs are the right amounts, you both have to accept it after the last edit no matter how many times it's edited. (yes I have kept editing it to try to get around this)
I would like to see the ability to edit the other person's side of the offer added, at least for the initial Trade Offer, if you could then this trade I went thru would have been easier. You could have setup the whole trade offer, your half and their half and presented it for approval, assuming it was OK with "They" all they would have to do is accept it, it would then come back to you for your acceptance and is a done deal.
Hopefully this will help out ranchers using the Trading Post for the first time, it's pretty easy to use once you understand the basic workings of it.