Of course nothing special needs done for brand new characters. But what about your existing character's ships? This process is the same as any custom ship mod.

Upon simply downloading the mod... nothing will happen to your existing shipworlds. So you could try this with a new character to see if you like it (and delete it if not) without danger to your existing characters current ship. . Once you've ultimately made your decision, it isn't too difficult to get a shipyard for your existing characters.

. By "backup" I mean copy the file to another location. You could even just copy the entire /starbound/storage/player/ folder if you prefer(so your characters are also backed up). Of course this isn't a terrible idea before any point you are going to install a mod you aren't sure of.

Then go in game and remove EVERYTHING from your ship... everything you want to keep anyhow. Put in on a planet somewhere. The process is much easier if you're using one of those "persistent container" mods because you can just move the containers with everything still inside. Either way once you're done, exit the game.

Then to back into /starbound/storage/player/ and delete your shipworld. . Assuming you have multiple characters, here is how you know which is which.

Ideally have your folder set in "view as details" mode so you can easily see the last modified date. Otherwise you need to check file properties. Anyhow the last modified .shipworld file is the last file that got saved... aka the last character you where logged into. Really though it doesn't matter because you might as well just do this for all of them and not worry which is which.

Go back into the game and log into your character. Since you don't have a shipworld anymore... Starbound will generate a new one! You now have the shipyard with all the ships. They're all upgraded to the level you had previously. So the process is complete.