I'm not sure if this is completely appropriate for this board-but I'm discussing Fallout lore in general, so I'm not sure where else this would fit with any certainty.

Take note I've only personally played Fallout 3, and haven't even really read much about the Enclave in the entire Fallout series. But in Fallout 3, I do not recall the Enclave being clear-cut on the view of vault dwellers. It doesn't help that there is only two characters, Colonel Autumn and President Eden, that actually interact with the player character in a way that is entirely combative. Those two, I don't remember anyways, never expressed a definite hatred toward the player character-though they weren't actually born in a vault, but lived there a majority of their life in one. And they didn't really every mention the other vault dwellers.

I ask this purely out of curiosity-in another thread on this board members have discussed whether or not they think the Enclave could turn to an overall good/"nice" faction and brought up their views against anyone who even lives in the Wasteland-viewing everyone of that background(no matter how human they may be and/or look) as mutants. So what of vault dwellers? Did previous or later(Fallout New Vegas) games in the series better explain? Did Fallout 3 explain(in which case I must have forgotten or completely missed some details)?

In the opening of Fallout 2 they slaughtered an entire vault for the technology.

In Fallout 3 they'll shoot Amata after she tells them where Vault 101 is (if you open the vault in Trouble On The Homefront)

Yeah, the Enclave are not nice people by any stretch of the imagination.

From the conversations president Richardson in Fallout 2, the Enclave seems to consider Vault Dwellers from sealed vaults as American citizens. But there is where their special treatment compared to common wastelander ends. Enclave still views them as unimportant and expendable in their plans. This is seen in their actions in both Fallout 2 and 3.

They treat them very poorly, which I admit, is the one thing I never really liked, epecially post-Fallout2 when their numbers must have been very low. But canon takes a backseat to giant robots so...

No, they shot the Vault 13 Dwellers for "Resisting" - thats they're story and they're sticking to it.

(in either case, it wasn't for their tech, it was for their bodies to experiment on).

The Enclave view any vault dwellers at best as irrelevant, at worst as subhuman. The best and the brightest were in the Enclave - if they were in a vault, they werent important enough to warrant saving.

Lab rats.

Target practice and lab animals, see Fallout 2.

The Enclave views the Vault Dwellers as the citizens. But then again, the Enclave is like the super powerful overlord shadow government so yeah, they'll experiment on their own citizens.

This. Most of the vaults were for the vault experiments. Only 17 vaults were for saving people and would have opened when radiation outside was at a safe level. Vault 13 was to stay closed for 200 years as a study of prolonged isolation. Water chip went bust so they sent out the Vault Dweller FO1 to get another. This lead to Arroyo. When the Enclave found Arroyo it was a chance to study mutation on pure humans in a short time. So they opened Vault 13. Vault 101 was never to open. Vault Zero was a main land version of the oil rig. Anyways Lab Rats sums it up nice.